Hi everyone! I won a college writing contest, the University of Alaska Fairbanks Norther Lights Essay Contest. Other contest winners and the titles of their submissions can be found here. Enjoy!
Aves
When a bird breathes life, it gives us
stories. I once let a fairy tale convince me that claws would pierce my irises
and a blood stained beak would forever trap my sight. Years passed until I
could cross my darkened yard alone without sprinting, wishing to empty my ears
of the horrible hoho hoo hoo of the Great Horned Owl and absurdities people
tell gullible children. I remember being greeted by a hummingbird while
watering flowers—black-pearl eyes inquisitive, emerald wings buzzing
conversation. My neighbors paid me for hydrating their plants, but at age
twelve, money wasn’t nearly as important as being able to capture the flying
jewel’s bill poised in a dainty smile only feet from my face. He zipped off
after I eyed him for a breath. Since then, I’ve wished my eyes were cameras. From
the time I was fourteen until about age eighteen, I heard the enthusiastic trills
and clicks of my canary when the eastern sun struck his lemon feathers. Head
high and neck fluffed as a dandelion, he explained how the phone rang. I cried
the first time he told me this, as I thought he couldn’t sing. He was shy, only
a year old when I first met him, but eventually his pitch stung my eardrums.
Every day after school, he greeted me with the same, always precious song.
I’ve felt avian interest in fleeting
pulses since I was five years old. My family took me to the Grizzly and Wolf
Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, open all year long because their bears do
not hibernate. I figured they
couldn’t with everyone laughing loudly as they wrestled and gasping as the wolves
appeared, heads as large as that of a horse. Afterward, we visited the gift
shop. Instead of one of the iconic predators, I asked for a Raven toy. They
were black velvet thieves—confident to eat the predators’ food right beneath
their noses, never once getting cut by a claw. My curiosity persisted since
then. Staring at the Ruffed Grouse through my cracked window one summer, I
desired to return heat to his skin, though its soul long since left his
red-speckled chest. I’ve spent weekend drives admiring eagle nests placed
dizzyingly high atop telephone poles, dreaming of living there nearly breathing
in the clouds, watching pheasants run between the sparkling choruses of
songbirds.
The world holds more than ten thousand
species of birds, most of which I will never see. The Emu is the tallest I’ve
touched and the only one with two feathers sprouting from each shaft. His head
bobbed up through gaps in a fence panel. Fast as I thought I was at fifteen, I
never would’ve caught his friend, another Emu, who left him fast as the cars in
town to chase a train. When I was eighteen, “his eyes!” was all I could say in
response to witnessing the most shocking, perfect yellow—the irises of my first
Great Grey. Months passed as I searched for one, but they’d rather appear to
the unsuspecting witness, home for college winter break. Of all the birds I’ve
met, the white parrot in the shelter uptown is the only bird who’s laughed at
me—a joyous, unnatural sound.
The American Robin sheltered her topaz
gems beneath the gooseneck of Dad’s trailer. The nest was protected from
driving rains, but what an inconvenient place, situated against various cables,
sure to be crushed by the act of hitching, or stolen by gusts when following
the highway. Thus, we rode our horses in
the yard and glued a plastic cobra in the gooseneck once the red-breasted
family fledged. The nest filled with color the following spring. Our friend’s
Araucana condensed spring landscapes into drops of pastel green, which we
received in a basket as a special surprise. I’d never seen eggs dyed from the
internal chambers of a hen living under a swing set and wondered how the yolk
looked. The oblong moon of the African Ostrich filled both of my child hands
when I visited Tanzania. Its porous exterior was cloud white, the scramble from
its contents just as fluffy on my toast. They were the best eggs I’d ever
eaten. All bird eggs are calcium carbonate. Beneath the fragile dome is a
pulse, which usually beats free from its holding.
In college, I took summer class taught by
a field biologist. He admired insects and peony flowers, yet never went a class
without declaring, “Birds are the pinnacle of evolution!” Almost every Tuesday
of July, we’d meet before class began. I wanted his words—declarations and
advice—and the map to his feathery world. Either from our talks of career
preparations or his enthusiastic stories of international bird banding
adventures and owl box checks, something sparked in my stomach.
In a sea of haggard spruce trees, five
owls pendulated between branches and telephone poles, hunting and chanting to
their mates. When I awoke I felt acute emotion swirling in my core. I want to
find birds of numerous kinds, sing their melisma, touch the silken barbs of
their feathers, and devote every hour to discovering them from their souls to
the scythes of their claws. For the first time, then age twenty, I finally felt
unquestionable passion.
I began volunteering at the banding
station in Creamer’s Field, feeling lucky that such a special place was only a
ten minute drive from campus. The station set learning opportunities right
between my fingers. Waking up with the cranes calling overhead, rushing the
dingy sky to brighten, I hurried to the site. I set up nets invisible to avian
eyes and extracted an impressive variety of birds from the tangled mess of
thread-thin nylon. My fingers shook, afraid of hurting the hollow-boned beings,
but the first one I freed was my favorite color, a slate grey Dark-Eyed Junco. Everything
must be alright. Later, a thrush yelled at me once I freed her head, a sharp
affirmation of my newfound confidence. After three hours, I returned to campus
for class, feeling tired, knowing the experiences were worth every lost hour of
sleep.
A universal agreement among the banders at
our station concerned the Black Capped Chickadee—they are the angriest of all species
pulled from our mist nets. One individual pressed her beak furiously into the
skin of my knuckle for four whole minutes, refusing to release her hold even
when I opened my fingers to let her fly back to the trees. I hardly felt it,
but I remain impressed with the tough ferocity of Alaska’s smallest
overwintering bird. Many of the children who visited the station loved the
Wilson’s Warbler, a cheery yellow speck in our hands. I feared the one I held
would slip his minute head through even the smallest space between my fingers
before we could take measurements, his warm pulse upon my palm sharing his
life. Most people in town have seen robins, but I’d never realized how thick the
legs of one felt and how robust their chests are until trying to contain one
against the same palm. Everyone admired the idiosyncrasies of the songbirds,
yet I hoped the lessons they taught me were applicable to the frost feathered
owls of Alaska’s northernmost coast.
One day soon I’ll visit Barrow, the place
whose ocean and snowy owls I’ve always wanted to touch. I will find purpose
while studying their habits and gathering data to help promote their
recognition and our understanding—preserve an icon of the north. All owls are intriguing, ominous creatures,
marked by vicious determination and strength. They are silent, appearing at the
unlikeliest of times, twisting their heads impressively to absorb their
surroundings in more detail than humans could ever hope to obtain. Yet I want
to hear a cackle across the tundra most of all. I think the allure stems partly
from Barrow itself, while the snowys simply happen to be there. When I was a
kid, I dreamed of touching the Arctic Ocean because it was impressively far
from my home and I didn’t like feeling hot as I would in the tropics. I knew I
couldn’t go to a place without a name, and Barrow was the farthest city dot on
our family’s globe. I’d feel lucky to be the first in my family to travel to
such a latitude. Coincidentally, I’ve found the perfect convergence of a past
and present desire—a second’s view of a golden iris and the ice laden sea spray
stinging my hand will appease me till my memory dies.
Ever since waking to fateful feelings that
summer morning, I’ve needed to answer a calling. Why or where this impulse came
from, I can’t be entirely sure, but it’s stolen my thoughts and quickened my
heartbeats. Sometimes I consider myself crazy for my feelings, but the birds beckoned
me. The Sandhills whooped welcome to my unsuspecting, fearful heart when I
first arrived at college in Fairbanks. Watery yelps of the Raven became my
favorite north sound, pleasing my ears whenever I heard them on campus or on
walks through town. White and red morphed from the windswept snow as a Ptarmigan,
surprising me on my first trip to the Arctic Circle. I even found a feather of
a Great Horned Owl on the sidewalk while walking across campus. Surly, these
encounters were signs saying birds are my species and Alaska is the place for
us.
My visions are carried on wings. They come
in innumerable colors, variety, and strength, like the birds at their centers. I
focus on my future with the owls of Barrow and other birds I hope to find.
Every memory, each encounter, and sign after sign solidify my dreams into paths.
They lead from my core across Alaska, and anywhere else I could possibly desire
to go, anywhere a bird and I are destined to meet. They show themselves all
around me, somehow within reach.
by: Jessica Herzog
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| A Great Horned Owl I saw on the UAF campus in the summer of 2015. |
Class Assignment
Submitted for the UAF Northern Lights Essay Contest, March 2016
