Birding into the Unknown

On surrounding yourself with the indecipherable

The last of the bats are winging their way home when dawn arrives over Sayulita. Wisps of pink cloud streak the sky like leftover streamers from last night’s fiesta. In the upper level of a nearby villa, a window blinks on like an eye and a woman appears at the mirror, brushing her long black hair. A trio of egrets flies through the dark canopy in the valley below. The wavering white line of their bodies is a thread through the palms — avian sutures illustrating the origin of the word sutras, Buddhist scriptures that were originally written and stitched together on palm leaves. If I had a thousand lifetimes, I would never tire of watching the dance of a day unfolding.

When the sun is up and I can see where I’m going, I head to an unmarked trail and disappear into the jungle. The air is full of unknown bird calls. Back home, I’ve come to learn all the local species by their calls and songs, so that going for a walk, I always feel surrounded by friends: the tea-kettle-tea-kettle of a Carolina wren, or the scream of a crafty jay imitating a red-tailed hawk, or the jabber of a kingfisher down at the river. There is something so magical about knowing you’re in the presence of a Blackburnian warbler even when you can’t see the orange-black songbird hiding high up in the trees. But here on the West Coast of Mexico, I can’t recognize a thing. It’s just as disorienting as being in the middle of the market, where I also don’t speak the language. The sounds are beautiful and strange and unmoored of their meaning — like a pile of shed feathers found in the woods. Here, I become a school-kid again, a blank slate for learning. I must accept my place and resist the urge to try to prove myself, which doesn’t tend to end well. (At the taqueria, after placing a takeout order, I too confidently ask the server combien minutos?, mixing in the French I studied through college.)

This is one of many lessons I’ve learned through birding. It’s a humbling activity, where you can go from being an expert to an amateur just by crossing a few state lines. You have to get comfortable with the not-knowing. 

I stand at the base of a tall palm, craning my neck up, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever is making the wondrous warble. I can see the body hopping behind the leaves, moving faster than my binoculars can focus. I am so close to identifying this bird. Come on, I think. Just sit still for a moment. But the minutes pass, and my neck cramps, and eventually I have to move on. When you come to love birds, you have to learn to let go of the idea of beholding.

How often do we choose to remain in the dark? Birding strengthens my muscle for accepting uncertainty. I have always feared the night and favored the dawn, always made it my motto to reach for the light, uncovering all the shadowed corners of myself. But there are moments when it’s okay to sit in the darkness and the unknown — helpful, even. To walk away into the jungle on an unmarked trail, surrounded by undecipherable sound, submitting yourself to the landscape. It is here that you learn something new about yourself. You become as small as a caterpillar crawling around the roots of a Montezuma cypress. You become as untethered as a shed feather. You learn that it’s okay to be uncomfortable, that our desire to always run towards illumination — towards knowing and beholding, claiming and naming — is an instinct born out of fear.

Birding, especially in a foreign land, is ultimately a study in giving up control.

After walking on the trail for a while, I come across a cairn. Farther on, there are five or six more, huddled by a dried-up stream. Cairns are small stone towers built as trail markers or memorials. You find them at the summit of mountains, at the fork in a path, or at the site of a burial. Here, deep in the jungle, the cairns seem to symbolize both: a landmark on this otherwise unmarked trail and a ritual of collective grief. Some of the stones are painted in bright colors and emblazoned with letters. These words I know: live and kind and heal. To stumble upon a cairn is to momentarily meet a fellow traveler in the darkness. I was here too, it says. I walked this same path.

I stop and weep, in recognition and understanding, until birdsong explodes in the underbrush, leading me on into the unknown again.