Chapter Text
“As a young woman told me once, after first hearing the Thrush:
‘I don’t know what it is, but,’ putting her hand on her heart,
‘it makes me feel queer.’”
- Florence Merriam Bailey, Birds of Village and Field
I’m more of a lark than an owl.
Not the best bird to be when you have a two-hour walk ahead of you and no certainty of a safe place to sleep.
I waved goodbye to the friendly (but woefully misinformed) van-dwelling strangers who had carried me 300 miles to the high desert of Eastern Oregon. It’d taken several hours lurking around the gas station before anyone approached me, because I wasn’t holding a sign or anything. Eventually the gas station attendant asked why I was loitering, and when I explained I was attempting to hitchhike, he called some friends who happened to be headed the same direction.
The rattle of their rickety deathtrap faded into the distance and was replaced by a more invigorating sound:
Chi-ca-go! Chi-ca-go!
The iconic call of the California Quail!
I found the quail right as he ducked into a big sagebrush clump. Even that brief sighting pumped me up enough to begin the long walk toward my destination: the Tulare Living Learning Center.
At such a late hour (8:30 PM), I didn’t expect much bird activity, but the quail ended up being the least of my thrills, believe it or not.
As I trekked down Refuge Road, darkness settled in quickly. Every few yards, rustling noises or small shadowy figures darting between shrubs set my heart pounding. Then I happened to glance up at a utility pole and caught sight of a Great Horned Owl, their eyes gleaming in the fading light. I stood there gaping and grinning, almost crying at their imposing silhouette. Finally I managed to tear myself away, and a few poles later, I came upon a second Great Horned Owl, sitting like a floofy sentinel tasked to protect me from harm on my journey.
Of course, they were actually there to hunt and kill small mammals. They swooped past me in a failed attempt to catch a ground squirrel and I almost screamed.
Fortunately I didn’t, because it would have broken the most beautiful silence I’d ever heard. It was a welcome change after the interminable hours of Flat Earth nonsense from the #VanLife folks. Though the seemingly infinite acres of sagebrush sprawling out in every direction almost had me second-guessing my dismissal of their crackpot theories.
I was so busy scouring poles for owls and inhaling the strange aroma of juniper that I didn’t fully appreciate the night sky—until I reached the pond. Glowing on the water’s surface, the full moon’s reflection caught my eye, and my head tilted back reverently. My mouth hung open, swallowing all that starlight.
“Pretty incredible, isn’t it?” came a voice through the darkness, so softly that it didn’t even startle me. And I startle easily.
A shadowy figure squatted at the edge of the water like a Black-crowned Night-Heron. I rounded the sweeping arc of the figure 8-shaped pool, nestled against the curved facade of the Tulare Living Learning Center.
The moon and starlight reflecting off the pond illuminated the face of the Center’s Director.
“Valéria Flores, I presume!” I proclaimed a little too loudly and immediately felt ridiculous. Recent events had most likely damaged whatever modicum of social normalcy I might have had.
She smiled the smile I’d seen in the welcome packet. A frown-shaped smile. Tilting her head, she squinted at me. A thin silver ring in her left nostril glinted like a shooting star on the side of her nose.
“Just Val,” she said. “I recognize you. Sayre Dunn? Young Artist-in-Residence this summer?”
I was and I was.
“Well. Welcome.” She said it flatly, like it was a formality she felt awkward fulfilling. “Are you staying at the Pass with your family?”
I wasn’t.
A deep inhale filled my lungs with crisp desert air.
“I’m here to start my residency early!” I said brightly.
Val seemed to choke on something, maybe one of the hundreds of mosquitoes quietly closing in on us.
My best friend Mercy always talks about the importance of stating your purpose boldly. Confidence disarms people, she says. When you make a grand gesture, people are less likely to refuse. Go big or go home.
I couldn’t go home, so I was going big.
And really, a grand gesture was my only option. What else could I have done? Called from Eugene and told Val the whole sordid story? That someone—no idea who—had outed me to my parents? That my mom had ransacked my room in a fevered search for “the drugs associated with the lifestyle”? When that fell through, she tried killing herself. When that fell through, she sent me to an ex-gay counselor at a local megachurch for conversion therapy lite. And when that fell through, she took me—me—to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.
If I dumped all that drama on Val over the phone, and asked her if the Center could accommodate me a month before I was expected to arrive, how would she respond? Sure, no problem, we celebrate teens in crisis here? Doubtful. At best she would tell me I had to wait until the actual start date. At worst she would call my parents and recommend another psychiatric evaluation.
But how could she turn me down when I’d already hitchhiked 300 miles? In the face of a certifiable grand gesture, she couldn’t say no.
Surely she wouldn’t.
When Val regained her composure, she bit her lip and furrowed her brow. Then she bit her lip at a different angle and furrowed her brow a little deeper. She bit and furrowed and bit and furrowed till I wondered if her face would give way to reveal a freshly plowed field.
I tightened the straps of my backpack. Now that I wasn’t walking, the air felt chillier, and I didn’t have a jacket. Fuck.
At last Val said, “Huh.”
Oh no. I felt my bottom lip tremble.
“I’m sorry,” I said, voice cracking. “I’m really sorry.”
I turned to leave. This was exactly what I had come here to escape. Messing things up for everyone, being everybody’s problem. Maybe I could go back to the Pass and sleep in a Porta Potty. It’d be a little warmer in there. Human waste is pretty warm. Then in the morning I could hitchhike… somewhere else. I just needed to get through the next month, and then, if I hadn’t completely blown it with Val, I could hitchhike back—
“Hey, where are you going?” Val called out. “You can stay. For the night, at least.”
I could have collapsed into the dirt, legs buckling under the weight of a hundred emotions I couldn’t bear to look at directly—not yet, not now, who knew when. An involuntary sob of relief escaped me, but was fortunately drowned out by a Sage Thrasher who had suddenly started singing sweetly from some nearby shrub. Right in the middle of the night! It struck me as an auspicious sign; a glimmer of hope stirred inside me, in spite of everything that had happened up to this point.
Somewhat less encouraging was the cacophony that followed as a gigantic white truck came barreling down the gravel road. It tore through the night, stirring up a huge cloud of dust.
“And good evening to you, Sheriff Baker,” Val scoffed, throwing a middle finger in the general direction of the truck.
I also made a scoffing noise but couldn’t think of anything to contribute verbally. Instead I tried to assume a facial expression that would convey my openness to any anti-establishment sentiments she might wish to share.
She hung her head, inviting shadows that made her face look sunken in and sort of terrifying, like a fruit in the midst of the dehydration process. Not quite a raisin but no longer a grape.
How old is Val? I wondered. Twenty-nine? Forty?
My heart started racing, because I swear from the look on her face she could tell what I was thinking. Mercy always says I have a face like a daisy: white as snow and easy to pick apart.
I gave Val a queasy smile, trying desperately to make my mind an impenetrable blank.
Then I realized I’d forgotten something.
“Thank you,” I blurted out.
Val nodded. Frown-smiled.
“It’s late,” she said. “Let’s get you settled in.”
She led me inside, where the scents of sagebrush and juniper gave way to those of wood floors and old field guides. Fixed permanently to one of the glass double doors was a sign acknowledging that the Tulare Living Learning Center was built on Paiute land, and that I should remember to be a considerate guest. On the other door, a colorful poster declared that the Center welcomed all races, religions, countries of origin, sexual orientations, genders… The list went on. We stand with YOU. You are SAFE here. And we are STRONGER TOGETHER.
Those words echoed in my head as Val fetched keys for an empty pod, and as I fell asleep in my new bed.
Even though I’d stayed up way past my bedtime, I still woke up at dawn—in my usual cold sweat—to the earnest pink! pink! pink! of dozens of White-crowned Sparrows.
My damp blanket swaddled me from head to toe, in my classic croissant of sleep safety. With the zeal of a hatchling emerging from the dank confines of an egg, I pushed my head out. Freezing desert air gushed through the window I’d left cracked open just slightly. The rosy sky agreed with the sparrows: pink! A diverse chorus caroled outside, welcoming me to a new life. I listened closely to the bird songs, identifying each one with mnemonics I’d learned.
Cheer up, cheerily, cheerily! American Robin, that was an easy one.
Maids, maids, maids, put on your tea kettle-ettle-ettle! Song Sparrow. Classic.
Don’t you DAAAARE!
I leapt out of bed and tore through my backpack looking for binoculars. Quick detour to take my ADHD meds, which nearly sent me into a panic. How was I going to make my supply last? My parents made it clear that if I ran away they would cut off my insurance, and that there was no way I could get insurance by myself until I turned 18.
Birdsong intervened—cheer up, cheerily, cheerily!—and I recalled the very sensible rationing plan I’d concocted. All I had to do was take half my prescribed dose five days a week and skip two days a week entirely, and I could make the meds last until a week after my July 4th birthday.
Eighteen at last. Talk about Independence Day.
I should be grateful I managed to get my meds at all. When I first ran away—from my house to Mercy’s—I had to leave them behind, because they were locked up in the safe where my parents kept things like birth certificates (and, lately, my bottle of paint thinner, for fear that I might be huffing it). My art teacher, Donna, managed to get my parents to deliver the bottle—of meds, not paint thinner—to the school on the grounds that I needed them to make it through graduation.
I felt a wave of anxiety at the thought of graduation. Deep breath. Bird by bird, Sayre. What was I looking for again? Binoculars.
Then it dawned on me: my binoculars weren’t in my backpack. Not today. Instead, they hung on the binocular hook by the window.
I clasped a hand over my mouth and tried not to squeal with excitement.
I did it. I made it. To a place with binocular hooks by the windows.
Squinting out into the morning, the words on the poster came back to me. “We stand with you, Yellow-headed Blackbird,” I said. “You are safe here. And we are stronger together.” I scanned the pond. “Now where the fuck are you?”
And then I found him. Jet black, head dipped in gold, balanced on a raggedy cattail. He adjusted and readjusted his grip until at last he found the footing necessary to engage the syrinx—the song-box, the avian counterpart to the larynx. His wings drooped down to reveal flashy white patches as he squeezed out another round of his bizarre scolding song, his neck extending upward like a fluffy accordion.
Now I really did squeal with excitement. Goosebumps rushed across my arms and legs, up my neck and over my scalp. I was, as Mercy would say, plotzing. (I still wasn’t totally confident about the origin of the word plotzing—Mercy’s Haitian Jewish mom who grew up in Florida, or her Ashkenazi Jewish dad who grew up on Long Island—because they were the only three people I’d ever heard say it. Our unincorporated borderline-rural suburb of Eugene wasn’t exactly the Bronx.)
I opened my sketchbook to a fresh page, quickly but carefully. My mom had carried out enough destruction of my art to last me a lifetime. I regretted telling my art teacher Donna about that. She had cried even harder than I did.
Now she wouldn’t have to cry over me anymore. That, at least, brought some relief.
First I outlined the shape of the bird, from the puffed out breast to the pointy conical bill, the slope of the back, the odd angle of the tail being used for balance. I worked hastily to capture something of the bird’s essence before I had time to overthink it. My art goes downhill fast when I think. Sometimes I end up in the throes of an existential crisis. (What is a conical bill, really?) For this reason I could never be a composite sketch artist. That, and because I refuse to cooperate with law enforcement. Especially after my recent run-ins.
It isn’t worth getting into. Onward and upward!
I used a kneaded eraser to pick up excess graphite and tidy everything up. Next, to add color.
Out of habit, I reached for the tin of colored pencils that I usually kept in my backpack. Usually, but not usually enough.
I pursed my lips, picturing the broken tools of my craft. I tried not to picture my mom breaking them.
Whatever. What’s done is done. For now, I would lean into pure, unadulterated graphite pencil drawings. Many great artists have done some of their finest work in black and white.
I turned to the back of my sketchbook and started a new bird list for a new era. I added a star next to Yellow-headed Blackbird to indicate that this was also a lifer—a species I’d never seen before. Then I checked my black Chuck Taylors for scorpions, as Val had warned me to do, and put them on, pausing for a moment to rub a thumb over the pattern of feathers Mercy had drawn for me on the left toe cap, and the pomegranates and leaves I had drawn for her on the right. Hundreds of miles away, Mercy might be putting on her own shoes with the same patterns.
I shook this thought out of my head and stepped outside for my first morning in the Northern Great Basin.
I inhaled deeply. Exhaled. Sagebrush and juniper.
The Center opted for a dispersed dorm setup, with pods scattered across a patch of desert. In this way, the pods afford visitors and residents a level of quiet and solitude that would be impossible to achieve in a dormitory block. It also minimized the environmental impact of construction: each pod was constructed offsite but locally and transported to the desert for a quick installation. The pods stood on short legs to maintain the continuity of the desert floor and leave the habitat mostly undisturbed.
Approaching the Center by foot last night, I had marveled at the spectacle of the dorms. They looked like a moonlit herd of giant hovering armadillos.
Since I started birding a year ago, I’d dreamed of visiting the Center. I figured I’d make the pilgrimage to Tulare National Wildlife Refuge after graduation, dragging Mercy along with me. I knew she’d agree because she’d want to record soundscapes for the followers of her wildly successful self-help podcast, Mindfulness with Mercy Mack. I would take advantage of the Center’s famous observation deck. Mercy would see a Black-billed Magpie and finally transform into the BBF—Best Birder Friend—of my dreams. And because I had no money, we’d spend our nights at the Pass, an RV park with cheap camping options.
Then in January, my miracle-worker of an art teacher, Donna, told me about the Center’s Young Artists-in-Residence program. She helped me craft a compelling project proposal and put together a portfolio. I didn’t think I had a chance—there are only three slots each summer, and it’s pretty competitive—but lo!
“And now,” I said aloud, “I’m living in one of the pods. I’m a pod person. This is my new life.” Independent living had made me giddy.
I hadn’t even made it off my porch when a twinge of panic discolored my joy. Before Val Flores had given me the key to my pod and sent me off into the night, she’d told me to meet her on the lower observation deck at eight o’clock in the morning.
Fuck. I scrambled back inside. The clock read a few minutes to seven.
Just enough time to figure out what I could possibly tell Val.