Considering Aluminum Tape, and Shorebirds.

    It’s amazing how friends can inform your perspective on particular matters, especially when their insights and opinions come from their vocations. Driving around Ft. Lauderdale with my friend Kent some years ago my eyes were opened to the many commercial sites that contained contaminated soils in need of remediation. Kent worked for the State of Florida coordinating emergency responses to spills and their subsequent clean ups, and as we drove along he pointed to lot after lot of fenced in polluted properties. One had soil piled up under tarps, and another was a more serious toxic brownfield site awaiting federal aid for clean up. I remember it startled me a bit, and I remember Kent being very animated as he freaked me out, not unlike a small town resident discovering how many historic murder scenes their little seemingly innocent little berg had tallied up. As with all the other motorists whizzing by I would have had no clue if not for the kind of work Kent was in.

    That’s one example, but now come to think of it, neither of my other two are very uplifting. My friend Ali’s nonchalant accounts of keeping aircraft in the air with rolls of aluminum tape was enough to make you swallow, as was the question whether the guys who signed off on those maintenance work orders could actually read english. At least my old roommate Nick had a fun perspective. Nick worked for years on a building crew, and he enjoyed pointing out shoddy workmanship as we drove the winding streets of Tallahassee. Nick amazed me. His trained eye could catch construction crimes like crappy framing and poor sheathing not to mention wood rot from behind the wheel rolling along at 45 mph. I recall a large swanky apartment complex that had been finished a few seasons prior with tell tale signs of black mold and rotten wood in a superfluous cupola tower three stories up at least. I could’ve walked in and out of there a thousand times and never noticed it as I’m sure most of the occupants didn’t, however with Nick’s perspective I enjoyed a sense of smug superiority.

    Then there’s the insights that comes from the interests and passions of our friends. I never cared too much about cars, but I have a friend from Eastern Europe with such deep convictions and opinions on car and engine design that it’s impossible not to let his appreciations rub off on you. On our way to a camping trip we were driving behind Jody pulling his sturdy British made Drascombe Dabbler--a classic small North Sea sailboat. The idea of hanging an outboard off a sailboat stern like we do in America is an anathema to British sensibilities, so they create a well for the shaft of the motor to drop through. It looks a bit odd out of water but it is seaworthy. Laslo’s reaction was swift, visceral, and steeped in car culture. “$#@(*&^% British make engines that leak oil and their wiring sucks and they make boats with %$@%$# holes in them”.  That all came out in one torrid, heavily accented tirade.

     I tried to explain the boat had a water tight partition, but Laslo wasn’t having it. To Laslo, British made=Bad (maybe Mini Cooper excepted). German made=Good but over-rated? American made=Fine if you’re driving fast in a straight line. Italian made=what is there to say? A Ferrari is a Ferrari. Japanese made=excellent and he’s using an older Civic to win Auto-cross races. Laslo is confident his criteria is serviceable enough to cover nautical matters, and to be fair, the Japanese do make great outboards. But the point is I don’t, and can’t...see cars the same way after knowing this man. When a nice Audi or BMW slips by on I-10; where before I had no thought on it, I now smile and appreciate the design, and to some extent, maybe my friend Laslo as well. So, as a guest of this blog, I put in to be that guy to you, on a different subject of course.

                                                                  Shorebirds!

    No really. I’ll explain with an example. Maybe six, seven years ago,  I was watching two bored kids, one a toddler, in a inter-coastal waterway park in Ft. Lauderdale while Tracey was at a conference. Moral was low; bad night in a hotel as was the custom at the time. As we were milling about, our attention was drawn by a exquisitely lovely shore bird making it’s way towards us on the water’s edge. The bird had long orange legs and a sharp pointed bill. It’s coloring was a stunning pattern of black and white that looks absurdly like it was designed in a studio somewhere. It didn’t care about us, but worked it’s way up and down with it’s focus on the shallows. This bird, a Black Necked Stilt, was unfortunately named by a lazy person. Perhaps at the time these birds were everywhere, and deserved no particular notice. But this was now 2007, and I had never seen one before, and honestly, I can’t remember when I’ve seen one since.

     That’s the thing about shorebirds (I’m lumping in gulls, herons, terns, etc.). They’re wild beautiful creatures that may range over many thousands of miles, breeding and/or migrating from places we can barely fathom, and they pass through our landscape, and stroll right in front of us at the beach or near the dock at some waterside restaurant.  Depending on their adaptions to their environments and resources, they display a amazing array of shapes and colors, then just like that, they go on about their way, and we may not see them again for twenty years, if not ever! A experienced birder who spends a ton of time in the field may say, “Nah, a stilt’s pretty common”---to him maybe, but not to me, and not to someone who doesn’t get out as much as they’d like.

    And even if you do see a group or individual for a while, their patterns can change, and then you’ll be left saying to someone, “Remember when we used to see those lovely birds down by the docks?” Case in point, I grew up in Miami Springs, a small tree filled suburb near the international airport. Growing up we got excited if we saw anything besides a dove or a mockingbird or grackle. My friend Ali still lives there with his wife Azita, and a few years back he called and said “we have these amazing small finches with all these colors.” It turns out they were painted buntings! Now they frequent his feeders daily, and to Ali they’re as normal now as the neighbors, but their feeding patterns could change.

    So to wrap it up, as you move around; keep an eye out, because you never know what you’ll see, and even if it’s just the same flock of Ibis or gulls, keep your other eye out, because there’s a lot of inter-species hanging out, and often there’s something cool and different mixed in with them. That’s when it’s time to get out a bird guide, and when you open the book and start flipping through the pages, you get an sense how amazing and rich the varieties of birds there are. Some you see in the pages may be fairly infrequent visitors, or even fairly common, but it may be a special moment for you the first time you see it in the flesh. A special reward for paying attention. So there it is, my ‘shorebirds are cool’ pitch, all birds of course, and wildlife in general, as is seen in there area where you live. The things you see and become interested in can become part of your narrative, and that’s interesting as what you have there may not be what we have here, and incidentally you can see some amazing shorebird species even deep into the interior of the country.     

    I can’t say good bye from the weather rail every time, right now the boat is wrapped up under a tarp in the barn, and by the way, the ‘weather’ rail is the side of the boat from which the wind is blowing. When you see a bunch of guys hanging way out on the side of a sailboat, trying to keep it from capsizing, they’re on the weather rail. See, I brought it back to boats, and oops, it's time for another cup, so here’s to you!