I grew up in a nature loving family. We enjoyed nature hikes in the summer and cross country skiing in the winter. We had multiple ID books for birds, plants and even animal tracks. To make it easier to quickly find the right section in his Peterson Guide to Western Birds, my dad had added little colored plastic tabs that stuck out the side of the pages. He had also written in the date and location that he had seen different birds. I held this book with reverence as if it were a bible.
I always thought we lived in the best house ever. Although in the middle of Madison, Wisconsin, we were up on a hill at the end of a dead end with an undeveloped park for a back yard. We were totally surrounded by woods rather than houses. If you were looking for lots of neighbors and kids to play with, our home would have been a living hell. But my idea of a good time for as long as I can remember is spending time in nature.
Our living room picture window looked out into the tree canopy. I spent hours sitting in that window watching the cardinals, blue jays, goldfinches and woodpeckers that came to our feeders. Particular good days included brown creepers too. I thought they were so cool in elementary school I wanted to be one. What could be better than being an adorable little brown and white bird with a curved bill that creeps head first both up and down trees?
The area that was technically our backyard was literally about 10 feet square. It was bordered by a step rock garden on a hill that my mother maintained. There were plants with cool names like hens and chicks, violas, dutchmans britches, bleeding hearts, and jack in the pulpit. The one I never understood was the name viola. The hens and chicks looked like a mother and babies, the britches like pants, the hearts like heart, and a little guy named Jack really sat in the pulpit. But the violas looked like tiny pansies, not a stringed instrument.
It didn’t matter. I loved the happy bright yellow and purple they added to the garden. And each spring I looked forward to visiting an old man wearing overalls with my mother to get more violas for her garden. But I remember this as a place for looking, not for touching or playing. So, I always considered the extended woods that was the undeveloped city park as my backyard.
I knew exactly where to pick violets in the spring. I could take you right to the sunny patch where the dames rockets bloomed. I watched the shelf fungi grow bigger on the dead trees. I climbed the rocky cliffs that were all that remained of the quarry that this area used to be.
When I was old enough to be trusted with special things, my dad let me take his traditional heavy binoculars and his bird book out with me to watch the birds and try to identify them. I was here that I saw my first warblers. It required lots of practice and patience. I had to develop skill to get on the birds with the binoculars. And the little warblers moved so fast I spun in circles and got dizzy trying to follow their flight. But eventually I was rewarded with myrtle warblers and even an oven bird.
By middle school, we talked about birds in science class. We had to identify at least 25 birds and we could get extra credit if we could come up with a list of 100. I loved challenges and since I could already easily identify 25 birds, I really wanted to try to make it to 100.
I had already spent a lot of time in “my woods” and I was pretty darn sure that there were not 100 different species living in there. I turned to my dad for help. My professor father was chair of the department and worked constantly. But I was thrilled that he agreed to take me birding for this project. He taught me that different birds live in different habitats. To reach our goal we visited not only woods, but prairies, lakes and wetlands. The two birds I was most excited to see during our adventures: a yellow-headed blackbird sitting on a cattail in a marsh and a woodcock flying high in the sky doing its mating dance.
I treasure the copy of Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac that my mother’s mother gave to my father and signed “from one Naturalist to another.” Leopold wrote, “There are some people who can live without wild things and some who cannot.” I am definitely one who cannot.
Firefly Whispers stems from this foundation. Fireflies invoke mystery and communicate with light. Whispers require quiet and patience to hear. These are the things that inspire me and that I am moved to share. May the stories in this blog spark your curiosity, respect and awe for nature.