If I am not mistaken, Elsie’s memorial service is today. For those of us unable
to attend this is a nice substitute. As Kenn Kaufman reminded us a couple weeks
ago, the circle is unbroken and we share intimate connections known and unknown
with those who dipped their toes in the rivers and walked through the forests
before us.
Dave Irons
Beaverton, OR
Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 9, 2019, at 6:11 AM, Lars Norgren <larspernorgren@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It's an hour 'til dark in late October. That's all the time Hannu and Rasmus
have left of their Oregon birding experience. I've led them to the
maintenance driveway of South Beach State Park and as an ominous squall looms
to the west I'm thinking of Elsie. I was here one rainy day in 1975 when
Elsie silently tore strips of retired household textile and passed them out.
I had already heard and seen Wrentits many times, and each of those times
vastly more clement than that day. We used the rags to wipe our binoculars
dry two or three times a minute. Maybe 100 yards down a tunnel of evergreen
huckleberry we got extended looks at a pair of Wrentits. That was an official
field trip of OSU 's Experimental College birding class. Elsie and Elzy were
enrolled in the course. A graduate student in Fisheries and Wildlife named
John Casteel was the instructor. I've heard and seen Wrentits many times
since, but that occasion always comes to mind. Passerine birding in a
downpour is always a fool's errand. The rest of that day was spent looking at
ducks and grebes from inside a car, not only comfortable but passive,
focusing our binoculars on whatever the tide served up. The walk in the
bushes was a dedicated and focused affair.
Elsie could be deadly serious about something and have a wonderful
time in the process. And share that wonderful time. The winter l was in
fourth grade it snowed a lot in January. School was closed for a week, but l
had a broken leg and stayed indoors. My father put a piece of plywood in the
back yard and sprinkled chicken feed on it. I soon began seeing birds l'd
never seen before, some l didn't know existed. A few days into the white
weather l saw a budget sized Robin on the top of our cherry tree, hunched up
and miserable. When l pointed it out to my father he exclaimed, "Oh, that's a
Western Bluebird." We lived there for another ten years and l never saw
another bluebird in the yard.
It was a given that bluebirds didn't occur in Corvallis. A trip to
Finley or other nearby oak savannah rarely produced bluebird sightings. An
entire day on a Christmas Count in appropriate habitat seldom produced them.
It's been 50 years and those times when my team found bluebirds stick out in
my memory. I joined Bill Thackaberry for the Corvallis CBC about ten years
ago, driving the rectilinear roads of Linn County in the fog. It was a two
dimensional landscape without horizons. "I've done this area every year for
50 years,"Bill told me."lt's so boring nobody ever joins me a second time."
I was there in hopes of seeing a Prairie Falcon. I was approaching 50
years of age myself and had yet to see one in the Willamette Valley. Two were
detected on the Corvallis Count that year, but neither in our sector. We saw
bluebirds. Flocks of them, in the fog, in the rain, over and over again. Bill
attributed their abundance to Elsie. We couldn't see the road 100 yards ahead
of us. We could barely see the tops of the ash trees a few yards off the
road. But the inside of the car was aglow from Bill's face."We have a Fourth
of July party every year and she and Elzy always come."
With my parents in rapid decline l moved back to Corvallis and found
bluebirds frequently, in town, without a dedicated effort. Running errands on
bicycle it's possible to see them twice in the same hour at different places.
One day in May a whole family appeared in our front yard. A younger
generation takes this for granted, and that's good. They say you can never
step into the same river twice. I tend to feel the same way about forests .
In this part of the world trees go up four feet a year and add an inch to
their waistline in the same time. The Finns with me at South Beach State Park
have spent almost three weeks in the Pacific Northwest birding dawn to dusk.
They say these Wrentits are one of the very best experiences of the trip. My
own unvoiced response is that without Elsie, it wouldn't have happened. I
want so much to share that with them, and know it is infinitely more futile
than looking for songbirds in a downpour. Doing the math in my head l say,
"Someone first took me to this spot 43 years ago."
"We weren't even born then."
.
