“Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings.” – Victor Hugo
Aging My Way
Today’s Tucson Bird Alliance’s online newsletter featured a MacGillivray’s warbler, a small gray and yellow migratory bird that is currently passing through Southeastern Arizona.
It was one of the birds I specifically went hunting for during my early days of birding. I found it on July 1, 2004, at Tony Grove, a beautiful lake located at an altitude of 8,100 feet off Logan Canyon in Northern Utah.
I visited the grove many times after moving to the area for the first time in 1971, both for the area’s hiking trails and the opportunity to renew my sanity when life was stressful, as many of those earlier years were. And after an eight-mile roundtrip trail that led from Tony Grove to white Pine Lake, which I usually hiked, I always felt I could once again handle whatever life threw my way.
Nature has always done that for me.
But at 86, such a hike is out of the question. Both my balance and stamina have abandoned me. The best I can do is maybe a one-mile walk on level ground pushing my rollator before me and stopping at least a few times along the way.
Thankfully, I have my memories – and my stress level these days is pretty much zero. I also have lots of birds that visit my small patio yard. So, I’m going to keep an eye out for that MacGillivray’s.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion Scamp. She is an avid reader whose mind is always asking questions (many of which are unanswerable), an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for Story Circle Network’s Journal, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.
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