On a Wing and a Prayer: Field Trip #1: Judy, Don't Be Late

Our first field trip is scheduled for Saturday, August 3, at 8 a.m. at the Audubon Nature Center at Chatfield. I’m home from vacation, and ready to start my AMB journey. To say I am eager would be a stretch; I am far too tired to be eager or excited about anything.

The Great Galapagos Adventure of 2013 was many things (wonderful, inspirational, educational, eye-opening, exciting…..just for starters); the one thing it was not was relaxing and restful. I arrive home on Thursday evening, August 1, happy and full of pictures of the stuff I’ve seen – pictures both in cameras and in my mind – but also utterly and totally exhausted. I’ve made the mistake of planning to work on Friday, mostly just to catch up on email, but people have scheduled meetings throughout the day. Then late in the day, I discover that no matter how careful I was while in Ecuador (I brushed my teeth with bottled water! I drank only bottled water!), it turns out that I was not careful enough, and I have a late-onset case of turista.

Uh boy, just what I needed when I’m going on a field trip in the morning. I offer up a small prayer, one that maybe does not fit so cleanly into Anne Lamott’s “Help Thanks Wow” definition of prayer. Mine goes more along the lines of “Oh really, God? You think this is funny?” But I’m too tired to really do much about it other than swallow handfuls of Pepto-Bismal tablets (these pink things that made their way to and from South America safely, thank you very much). I cancel a dinner date with a friend, and head to bed at 7 p.m.

It’s a sign of how exhausted I am that the alarm, set for 6 a.m., wakes me out of a sound sleep. 11 hours of solid sleep? I must have been tired.

But sadly, the turista is not something that goes away overnight. I consider calling in sick to my first field trip, but really, it’s a fleeting thought. Having been late to my interview (no matter that the interview itself was late!), then missing Class #1, I just don’t see how I can skip this first field trip. So I’m up and out the door at 7 (having swallowed another handful of pink Pepto tabs as well as some Immodium), planning to be there at least 20 minutes early for our 8 a.m. start.

So it surprises me that not more than ten minutes later my cell phone rings. It’s Karen, one of my interviewers from the AMB program. She says, “Where are you? We’re waiting on you.” We quickly ascertain that there is a NEW schedule – one that nobody thought to send my way – with an updated start time for today. A start time of 7 a.m.

Suddenly my 20 minutes early becomes 40 minutes late.

I want to cry.

And I want to scream. That prayer last night? Well, yeah. Let’s not talk about how I followed that up in the car.

The good news out of all of this is that today’s field trip is really a “Field Trip Lite”: a practice field trip walk on paths at the nature center, along with a practice test. All of the testing for this program is done in the field: no hypotheticals, but real birds and songs and calls and plants and habitats. The further good news is that Karen tells me that while they are going to start without me, they’ll have someone wait for me at the Nature Center.

Still, I’m panicked. I pull into the parking lot and grab my binoculars and hat and waist pack, and hurry. My camera, my trusty companion? No time. It stays behind; I don’t have time to fuss with it. Dave – the guy who administered the test – is there waiting for me. He’s as calm as a lake on a windless day. I come running up, and he asks, do you need to use the restrooms before we head out to meet the class? Well, if you’re paying attention, you know I do, and for this gentle gesture from this man I barely know, well, I fall in love. I think Dave is about the greatest guy in the world. If I didn’t have to run to the loo, I may have embarrassed us both with a proposal of marriage.

My bliss lasts just a moment, though. We walk down the path and quickly catch up with the group. Out of a planned practice 15 test questions, they are already at number 10. Michael, the test leader, starts enumerating the next test questions. That bird that we’re hearing? What is it? And here’s another: name it. Take a look around, what habitat are we in? And so on.

We have 3x5” cards to write down our answers, and instructions on how we should label these things. But the thing is, I’m so rattled by all the things that seem out of my control – being sick, being late. And now, it seems that I’ve missed oceans of information in just my one missed class. My eyes and ears are attuned to Blue Boobies and brilliant tropical hummingbirds, not Colorado avian life. I hear birdsong I think I should know, and have no idea. I see a bird on a tree snag and think it’s a flycatcher of some kind that I should know, but I can’t get the specifics (it’s a Western Wood-Pewee, it turns out). This habitat? I have absolutely no idea what that even means. My 3x5” card is pretty much a list of numbers with no responses.

Oh.

This.

Sucks.

The practice test is done before I’ve even figured out the rhythm of it. I’ve done miserably, even on the few items I’ve been present for. I really just want to crawl into a hole and die.

We continue on the path, and things improve. I start getting into the rhythm of my surroundings, and kind people (mentors and fellow classmates alike) help me out. I see a brilliant bird, just briefly, and Jeff, one of the mentors, points it out as a Lazuli Bunting. I start to pick out my own birds after that, slowly getting back into the right environment. That noisy bird is a House Wren; that buzzing thing, a male Broad-tailed Hummingbird; that noisy bird over there is a Yellow-breasted Chat, something I magically recognize even before the people around me name it. I follow up my earlier not-so-friendly prayers with a quiet “thanks”.

We end the field trip with a session about preparing for the “real” field trips, gathered outside the classroom in brilliant August sun. I’m trying to soak in everything I hear, but mostly, I just want to go home. I’m tired, worn out, really, and it’s no way to start out in a year-long program. I pick up the books I didn’t pick up last Monday, classroom reading as well as The Notebook – the thing I will become a slave to in the coming year, or so I’m told – and head home.

At home, I’m feeling pretty dejected. I’m tired, oh so very tired. The good vibe of the vacation has been replaced by worry if I’m doing the right thing entering this program. I spent the morning birding – something that usually leaves me feeling good and relaxed and challenged and – in its most elemental – at peace with the world. But today, that hasn’t happened: the entire experience has left me frustrated and angry and insecure and stressed and tired and sad. How could a good thing go so bad, even before it has started?

But I have photos to finish processing, so I log on to my laptop, and start working on the photos I brought back from the Galapagos. Ah, there’s that Sparkling Violetear that Jared helped me edit. Wow – the photo is better than I remember. And there’s a Small Ground-Finch. Can I differentiate it from the Medium Ground-Finch? By the way, where ARE my photos of Medium Ground-Finches? Some picture jars a memory of our wake-up announcement every morning during the boat trip: Wilo, our Ecuadorian guide and naturalist, would announce breakfast and tell us our disembarkation time for the morning. Then he would add, every time – changing the names each time to rib different members of our group – “Bob and Jared, don’t be late”. It became a running joke, one of the signature riffs of the trip. Ah, what a great time that was. Wilo never once said, “And Judy, don’t be late”, even though I kept waiting for it. I miss those days so much already. But it’s only a very short time before I’m lost in the grace and peace of those islands. And the birds that inhabit them? Well, they give me joy, over and over again.