her from that first morning: a passion for birds—for truly hearing, seeing, knowing them—that made everything else in life seem trivial.
Somehow, she felt that if she had his face in front of her all the time she could hold on to that possibility. So she planned to throw herself into the course as wholeheartedly as she knew Cora would. (Lou was a different story; surely Lou would be one of the ones who went in search of another course.) But Addie knew that in the midst of her attention to birds she would also draw him, secretly, from the memory of watching him each day.
12 May 1965
Wednesday
Riegel’s Point, Plumville, Bucks Co., PA (Spit of wooded land between the Delaware Canal and the Delaware River, ½ mi. north of Plumville)
Time: 06:00–06:30—Mouth of Kleine Creek, near intersection of Old Philadelphia Road and the river road; 06:45–08:00—Riegel’s Point
Observers: Addie Sturmer. Alone.
Habitat: Pin oak, maple, and what, at home, we call an osage orange tree (with those odd, baseball-sized, brain-looking pods). Bluebells are blooming, and I saw more of Cora’s beloved windflowers.
Weather: Temp. 65 degrees F
Overcast and still, after a heavy rain. Would this be considered 100% cloud cover? Or did I see a small (1%?) patch of blue for just a moment at the turn in Kleine Creek at Haupt Bridge Road?
Remarks: I’ve taken your advice to cut class and listen, on my own.
SPECIES LIST
At mouth of Kleine Creek:
American Robin 3
Song Sparrow 1
Downy Woodpecker 1
Goldfinch 6
At Riegel’s Point:
Spotted Sandpiper (I think) 2
Number of Species: 5; Number of Individuals: 13; Time: 2 hrs.
Comments: I heard—and recognized—the Robin and the Downy Woodpecker. But the best moments were spent drawing a Sandpiper, pecking at the mud like an irritable old man who’s dropped all his change.
I just can’t keep writing all that Latin. I’m sorry.
12 May—I’m flattered that you’re willing to take me out in the field alone on Saturday; I look forward to this.
And I’m also flattered that you’re interested in seeing my drawings from England. Yes, I’ll bring along some of these. But not the paintings, no. They’re absolutely awful; I don’t think I’ll ever let anyone see those.
If I’m feeling brave maybe I’ll bring along a painting of a goldfinch I’ve been working on. I drew it for hours one day in New York City, in Central Park. Did you know the bird life there is incredible?
Well, that’s silly. Of course you would know that.
As to the great horned owl I drew on the first day of class—no, I don’t think so. That was more of a caricature really, to be honest. Nothing I’d want anyone to see.
And yes, it also has some of Louise’s commentary. But believe me, it’s not critical of you. Hardly.
Please don’t underestimate Louise (we call her Lou). It seems that nearly everyone does, and I suppose it’s her own fault. Honestly, though, she’s observing, and learning, more than you might realize—even though she probably seems to be interested only in luring Mr. “I’m Premed Like My Father” away from Princess “I Hate These Bugs!” (Lou can’t resist a challenge. The minute he takes the bait, she’ll turn her attention to other things and spit him out like cold coffee.)
Anyway, by now you’ve already seen what I mean about her in her field notebook. She’s a beautiful writer, isn’t she? And she’s getting really good at spotting birds—almost as good as Cora and Karl. When I go out on my own—which is better for the drawing, of course—I miss L and C’s good humor.
Even those predusk excursions are getting crowded, though. Karl always wants to come along, of course, which usually means his friend Robert as well. And I understand Mr. Premed is to join them on Friday. I imagine there will be a bottle of brandy too, and a tipsy walk back up Rising Valley or over from Gallows Hill.
But they’ll be watching and listening for birds too; they’re completely hooked. It’s all your doing, you know—you and your poems and that clever ruse of “calling out” the bobolink with your fiddle Monday morning. It’s all “the Survivors” (as we’ve taken to calling the eight of us who’ve yet to miss a morning in the field, and don’t intend to) talk about.
So, yes, it’s all your fault that the trails and fields and creek banks all around Burnham Ridge are crowded with insect spray–wearing, field glasses–wielding “birding loons” (our other name for ourselves) at the best hours for sightings, Monday through Friday.
So as I’ve said, I look forward to listening quietly, with only you, on Saturday morning—when all the Survivors will be sleeping off their birds and brandy.
five
PENNSYLVANIA, DEPENDING ON ONE’S outlook, is either all subtlety or a long lesson in contrasts, quiet and nuanced or screaming with too much history. It can feel—on, for instance, a drive from New York to Chicago—like an endless pelt of brown and gray, broken by a dramatic river and a bit of industry now and then, plus the requisite cheap and ugly overdevelopment of late-twentieth-century America. This was Scarlet Kavanagh’s view of Pennsylvania throughout her twenties.
But settling for that abstracted, through-a-car-window view, she eventually realized, was to miss some significant points of difference. The famous Amish farmland and the peculiar hex signs on the Pennsylvania Dutch barns. The gash of the mines to the north and west. Vestiges of colonial life (all those narrow stairways, for instance; had they really all been that small?) in the southeast.
Her mother, Addie, was a small woman—only a shade over five feet tall and just clearing one hundred pounds that spring when she and Tom Kavanagh fell in love. For Addie, Burnham College and its surroundings were a revelation. There was no other way to describe her discovery of that corner of Bucks County where the college sat neatly atop a ridge between two valleys. These valleys wound their way east until their creeks, the Nisky and the Kleine, emptied into the Delaware River, the dividing line between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. This beautiful spot was only a two-hour drive from Addie’s parents’ farm, but it could have been an ocean away. She had never set eyes on this part of the Delaware River until she’d learned of her acceptance, with the offer of a scholarship, and visited the campus during her last year of high school.
She loved all the colonial names—Hampstead and Plumville and Easthampton, Milford Crossing and Gallows Hill—with their echoes of England. There were German ones too, of course; the house she would eventually move into, with Tom, and where Scarlet would spend her carefree childhood and portions of her sullen teenaged years, had started out
