Aging My Way
“It’s quiet, peaceful. My soul feels blessed,” I wrote in my journal on March 19, 2002. This was the winter that I visited Antelope Island in Utah’s Great Salt Lake at least once a week. My companion was usually only my canine companion Maggie — and I usually had the 42-square-mile island almost to myself, given that there was often snow on the ground.
It was a very busy winter for me. As city editor in charge of my Ogden newspaper’s coverage of the 2002 Winter Olympics, whose downhill ski events were all being held in the paper’s backyard, Antelope Island was my recall to sanity.
I also thought of the lake and island as my personal Birding 101 Lab. It was here, with the help of birding field guides, I learned to identify ducks and swallows and shorebirds and songbirds all on my own. And I recorded it all in my journals.
The robin and meadowlark sharing a tree and seemingly trying to out-sing one another. The magpie stealing food from a golden eagle. A chukar sitting on a rock staring at me as I drove past. The rainbow of sparkling color on the starlings’ black feathers. The lone pair of Barrow’s goldeneyes among the flock of common goldeneyes. The pair of ravens that always seemed to appear near the curve in the six-mile causeway to the island.
And not just birds. There were bison, which sometimes blocked the road, and prong-horn antelope that kept their distance, and the porcupine asleep in a tree, and especially the lone coyote that followed me across the causeway one morning.
Rereading my words from over 20 years ago, while sitting here over 800 miles away in Tucson on a cold, but sunny morning, drinking my cream-laced coffee, I smile. It’s a good way to start Superbowl Sunday.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.
Pat Bean's blog 
I loved Antelope Island! I would have gone back there again if we’d stayed longer in Salt Lake City.
Perhaps we both can revisit the island one day. Thanks for commenting Sue.
Loved it. Sis u have definitly lived a fuller life than me
So did your team win the Super Bowl Robert. I was rooting for the Eagles but the Chiefs deserved the win. Thanks for commenting Robert.
And for me…reading this…a good way to end it.
Thanks for the kind words Dawn.
Pat, the descriptions of the island – the birds and others wildlife made me see it, although I have never been there. There are special places likes Antelope Island for me, too. The kettle moraine in Wisconsin, the Skyline Drive in Virginia. Places to reclaim our humanity. Thanks
Or like the top of Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park, or Scarborough Marsh in Maine. I could name a dozen more Lucy. We are gloriously blessed for having seen, and enjoyed such places. Thanks for commenting Lucy.