[va-richmond-general] Re: what's it all really about?

 I joined Aududon because all late spring I watched the nest of the Ospray at 
the U of R stadium and had no one to share it with.  I worried in fierce 
thunderstorms; sometimes, when I am sure it hailed, that they could not have 
survived and had no one to share it with.  I joined Audubon because a bird high 
in the North Carolina boughs haunted me with its etherial song when I walked my 
beautiful dog, my God-send of a dog, my dog who is no longer with me, up to the 
mountaintop where we lived at dusk every night.  I know now from my internet 
explorations that it was a Wood Thrush.  I joined Audubon because my Dad, a 
Peal Harbor veteran, still tormented by sunrise nightmares, a man so strangley 
incapable of understanding people, but so patient in a way I never knew myself 
that he seduced a Blue Heron into eating kitchen scraps from his hands every 
night at sundown.  My Dad unconsciously whistled the call of the Rufus Towhee 
and for years I tried to spot that bird and never could 
 see it making that sound, my Dad's sound.  It was one of you who pointed out 
to me--finally.

All we have is words, really.

They aren't just numbers.  They aren't just species.  They are an experince 
that only our words can bring to one another and to all the others, all the 
many others who never SEE, never HEAR until someone opens their minds.  I don't 
want to see species destroyed the way a little piece of woods and farmland and 
river and marsh was destroyed when I was just a kid.  We just can't live on an 
island anymore.

With all due respect and hope for a better place,

Kate 

 
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