I like having a pair of binoculars slung around my shoulder (and using them). It makes me feel purposeful, curious and ready.
I have always loved the original Dr. Dolittle books by Hugh Lofting (although the racist messaging in them is gratuitous. I wrote an essay analyzing this for 10th grade history class — that’s what an interesting assignment looks like. Thanks Ms. Smith!) One of the chapters, I believe in the “Voyages” book but it’s been a long time, is titled “Are You A Good Noticer?” For someone who “likes” animals and nature and purports to care about them and enjoy their presence, I have never actually been much of a noticer. Now I know 100+ birds and a couple dozen plants. “Know,” meaning I have identified each of them by myself in the wild. I’m a much better noticer than I was three months ago. I’m glad I took a job that scared the crap out of me, that I wasn’t qualified for, that required me to notice life outside my sphere.
I can’t imagine a better way to have fulfilled my two main goals for the summer — to explore a new region and net a solid chunk of income. That being said, the sacrifices have been so present throughout that time that they feel like they should go without saying. It was lonely being by myself for two months. Waking up and starting work in the dark was a battle every single day. Having to hunch-twist through the gap between the back of the car and the driver’s seat to put on my shoes didn’t make it any easier. Often I went long enough without smiling or laughing that I would notice when a smile crossed my face. Smiles come more readily around other humans. It was easy to get subsumed in the drumbeat of do-I-really-have-to-wake-up-today and feeling deflated when I didn’t know a bird sound and baking in the heat and I’m-greasy-where-is-my-next-shower-coming-from and thrashing through Gambel oak thickets and my-water-storage-is-running-low-and-I-don’t-know-where-to-refill. I got to explore, but I didn’t have the freedom of a thruhike mentality. Speaking of hiking, it’s easier to be dirty and disgusting in the wild than dirty at home (even, and especially, if home is a car.)
The next time I live in a car, I want insulating covers for the windows, 3 plain t-shirts (one more than I had) for dedicated daytime wear, and double the water storage capacity (>30L). And maybe a Crazy Creek chair.
I went to the grocery store probably once every five days on average, and spent an average of a bit under $30 per trip (the majority on oatmeal ingredients (breakfast), sandwich ingredients (lunch/dinner), and fruit (snacks)), so figuring roughly, my grocery spending came to $30-$40 a week. At about 2.5 “meals” per day, I was eating approximately 17.5 meals per week. This means that grocery shopping fed me — monotonously, but as well as I needed — for a little under $6 a day or $2.29 a meal, if we calculate based on the *more* conservative $40 weekly spending estimate. By contrast, the only 4 occasions I recall buying food from eateries (1. rooftop bar, 2. street fair food trucks, 3. burger shack — I didn’t order cow though, 4. pizza restaurant) cost $12-$20 per MEAL (wow)). I regretted buying half of the restaurant meals (bar and pizza) even while I was enjoying them, meaning ~50% of this luxury spending didn’t even increase my happiness! I’m glad I stuck to the grocery store except for the most special and dire occasions. I ate whenever and as much as I wanted, but I didn’t buy whatever I wanted*, and the math says I have a lot more money today as a result of two months of discipline. That said, I feel very lucky I get to go home to my mom’s cooking now. *Exception: nectarines and peaches. They were always worth it.
Speaking of groceries, I rarely cooked (each morning’s oatmeal soaked in my pot as I slept) and I didn’t have a cooler. I wanted to avoid the bulk of an additional object in my little space and the need to replenish ice that might get gross, or spill and get my stuff wet. Instead I kept my most perishable foods (lettuce, cheese, carrots, and salami) nestled among my four platypus water bladders in the trough behind and under the driver’s seat, where they would be shaded and the water bladders would keep temperatures cool. This worked pretty well, with only occasional food spoilage. When the leaves on a head of romaine were too wilted, which was rare, I threw it away. My blocks of cheese could get oily and melty but not unappetizingly so, and I think there were only two times when I lost them to mold. The salamis were fine as long as I didn’t try to make them last too long. In the last few weeks I tried to draw out their lifespans with unappetizing results. Now that it’s over, I’m satisfied with my non-refrigeration strategy but curious about what a cooler would have been like.
The Colorado I’ve gotten to know is rolling cholla rangeland in the southeast, red rock canyons in the southwest, and Rocky Mountains in the middle. Scattered between are tamarisk jungles, dunes of sand and ash, Gambel-serviceberry thickets, riparian birdfests, and a dozen other worlds. Colorado’s maze of mountains turns the land intricate — a place with four square borders made limitless with nooks and crannies. It’s all the West in a single state: a mashup of Texas, Arizona, Wyoming, and Washington. The high mountains I’ve been traversing over the past few weeks, in the southern center and west of the state, are the birthplace of the Colorado, Rio Grande, and Mississippi rivers. The United States becomes possible here. Something feels missing, though. Maybe it’s the ocean. Maybe it’s the arrangement of the mountains. It’s harder to see oneself in the mosaic archipelago of the Front Range, San Juans, Sangre de Cristo, and all the rest than in the proud arcing shields of the Sierra Nevada or Cascades or Brooks. Maybe the uncanniness would go away if I had the chance to know the state from end to end on foot in a single uninterrupted push. Colorado has shown me so much beauty over the last two months. I’m not sure I would live here if I had the choice.
Now I’m going home. Looking out of the airplane window, picking out the spire of Riverside Church, seeing the island for the narrow place it is. Searching for my family’s apartment as we fly a diagonal straight over Manhattan. Suddenly becoming aware of all the urgency that’s about to go out of my days. Mom will be waiting at the airport with rose-tinted glasses ready for me to put on, but here in the air, with the past few months gone but before a new life has taken their place, I know that urgency was a gift. I think of these wild summers as training, for what I don’t know yet, but when I need to be ready I will be. I remember the raw fear that gripped me during bird survey practice at Lake Pueblo, the early days with Frank and the bird prodigies. I held my nerve just barely enough to make it through. When I was alone, the rest of the season, I felt different. I still had trouble taking pride in my work when I didn’t know birds, but the fear and adrenaline weren’t there. They came from the other people — nice people, but fear came nevertheless. One thing I’ve learned in my training, these past few years, is that the human surroundings I choose to inhabit — the people, their behavior, motivations, cultural references, habits, and their effect on me — matter as much as or more than the geographical.
They say the haze in Colorado these past few weeks came from fires. New York is hazy too. As if all the United States are covered in smoke.
And now I’m turning into a bird. I am very skinny. I can feel remiges stirring in my forearms.