“A ringnecked pheasant,” Sam says. “I hunted them with my dog when I was a kid.”
“For a vegetarian, you’ve got a checkered past.”
“I’ve got a checkered ass as well,” Sam says. “This new saddle has seen its last ride on my bike. Do you want it? Maybe your body geometry is better suited to the good Doctor’s calipers.”
The year’s first lupine (one of the varieties of Lupinus argenteus) is in purple bloom. Lupine is another fine plant,” Sam says. “It causes birth defects and death in cows and sheep alike. Maybe we could make some lupine soup for the gravel pit owner.”
29 May, Great Western Trail, Mt. Timpanogos
Cloudy this Saturday morning as we set out on an early ride to see and hear the birds at a different time of day. By the time we are halfway up the lower loop, it is raining just enough to make things slick. We make it up the quartzite and start up the next hills. Halfway up a steep reach, my back tire slips off a large rock and I fall hard into oak and rock. “Well,” Scott says, “at least that wasn’t half-hearted.”
Evening primrose, Oenothera caespitosa, white succulent blossoms brilliant with raindrops, draw our attention. “Like something from the deep south,” Scott says. From a thick stand of scrub oak and maples comes a raucous and varied set of calls: a chirr, whistles, a squawk, a couple of linked notes. In the rain, steaming from our climb, we stand on both sides of the grove and try to see the birds making the noise. Fifteen minutes later, chilled, we give up and head back to the mouth of the canyon.
30 May, Great Western Trail, Mt. Timpanogos
Another of those blessed Sunday morning rides. The rock crusher is silent. The traffic across the canyon road is still. After yesterday’s rain, the birds are in joyous voice. A bushy-tailed, golden-shouldered fox slips up a slope and into some brush. My legs feel strong this morning and so do my lungs. Evening primrose, their large, heart-shaped flowers a milky, silky white, line the trail after their one-night stands. We stop to look at a single plant that produced five of the big flowers last night. Nineteen wilted pink flowers remain from previous nights’ orgies. The profligacy is overwhelming.
“There are two major strategies for living organisms to survive,” Sam points out. “Some plants and animals put their entire reproductive investment into a single flower or offspring which they care for intensely. Others simply produce flowers and seeds and offspring profligately and depend upon one or two of them catching hold. Some biologists have suggested humans are the epitome of care of few offspring, although your seven kids and my four may undermine that theory.”
“I’ve been wondering,” I tell Sam, “whether I’m the epitome of anything in regard to my family. Susan and I can’t get along and I spend more time on my bike than with my kids.”
“You’re good with your kids,” Sam says. “Ease up on yourself. You know I’ve got similar worries about myself as a father. But when the two men from the church who have visited us for years stopped by for the last time and told us they felt bad our kids had left the church, that they wished they had done a better job as ‘home teachers,’ I told ‘em to fuck off. My kids are full of life and moral commitment and I’m proud they have found their way. Self-righteous sons of bitches! Leave us alone! We’re doing the best we can and it’s better than most, no thanks to you and your kind.”
Back at the scrub oak and maple grove, we hear the same set of varied calls we heard yesterday. A lazuli bunting sings from a high branch, but he’s not what we’re hearing. Nor are the two western tanagers we see and hear from the same grove. Finally, Sam and I each catch a single glimpse of the noisy bird. It is large, dark-backed and yellow-breasted, and seems to be making the whole range of calls all by itself.
At home, we look through our field guides and come to the same conclusion: a yellow-breasted chat, Icteria virens. The book describes its “unmusical song” as “a jumble of harsh, chattering clucks, rattles, clear whistles, and squawks.” It also mentions “white spectacles,” which neither of us saw. “Chat,” the book says, may be derived from “chatterer.”
31 May, Great Western Trail, Mt. Timpanogos
A quick ride this morning before Sam and Nancy head south to spend the week in Teasdale. We’re rewarded with two sightings of the yellow-breasted chat, and note the white markings on the head. It feels like we’ve found a new friend. Goat’s beard (Tragopogon dubius) is the flower of the hour. Wherever you look, the yellow flowers dot the hillside. As the summer continues, they will transform themselves into puffy white balls of seeds. For the first time this year we also see the erect yellow inflorescence that inspired someone to call the stately mustard “prince’s plume” (Stanleya pinnata). It is named after Sam’s dear friend, Stanley Welsh.
1 June, Teasdale
Near the trailhead in Teasdale, two or three northern harriers (Circus cyaneus) hunt low above the fields. These birds, often known as marsh hawks, fit Utah mores perfectly. Up to fifteen percent of the males and forty percent of the females are polygamous. According to one study a few years ago, males preside over “well-structured hierarchical harems of two to five females.” The marsh hawks ought to be our state bird. Forget the California gull (which, by the way, has a relatively high incidence of homosexuality). Another couple of examples for our natural family manifesto.
5 June, Vienna (by email)
Sam—I arrived okay, and have checked into the Pension Falstaff, just around the corner from Sigmund Freud’s home in the Berggaße. On the plane, migrating from west to east across the Atlantic, I read the first half of Scott Weidensaul’s Living on the Wind: “Marginal habitat is the wave of the future, as the last pristine forests disappear. The chainsaw and the machete are always busy, the smoke is hanging in the air, and la selva Maya is a little smaller now than it was when you started reading this chapter.”
On the train from the airport into town, I watched a hawk hanging over a field of hops lined with brilliant red poppies and blue flax. It was a beautiful sight until my mind’s eye saw the hawk as a NATO jet over a fruitful Yugoslav landscape.
7 June, Vienna (by email)
Sam—Elections this week for the European Parliament. Advertisements for the FPÖ (Freedom Party of Austria) feature its clean-cut, right-wing, xenophobic leader Jörg Haider and claim that EUROPE NEEDS CONTROL. It doesn’t say over what, but the subtext is control over the foreigners who represent chaos, control over those who are different, control over the Weeds of the East.
How is it, Sam, that you and I—who would like to see those who exploit the planet and pollute the earth controlled, but who want more freedoms for difference, less control over individuals—how is it that we ended up teaching for an institution whose conservative leaders and guiding principles require more control over individuals and less over exploitative corporations, more control over those who are different and less over those who exploit the environment?
I wish you were here to see the current exhibition in the Belvedere: 19th-Century Paintings from
