Quest and Venture

"The Great is the Enemy of the Good." Wisdom imparted to me by a dear friend when I asked him if we should go to another bar in Amsterdam or stay at the one we were atm which was in fact, pretty good.  And is not true? How many good experiences do we pass up, so we can wait in line or pay too much money for something we hope will be great?  Try as we might to chase those 'great' 'once-in-a-lifetime' experiences, sometimes that chase leaves us (me) feeling hollow. Expectations are a dangerous thing, and who among us has daydreamed too highly of something only for the reality of it to disappoint? The converse is true as well. Haven't we all turned on some crappy Scifi movie or a Romcom expecting to fall asleep but instead find ourselves enthralled because our expectations were sufficiently low?  Set your expectations correctly and anywhere can deliver a fun-filled day. To illistrate this point, I present to you: Albany, New York Hand Hollow Conservation Area...

  We call our RV the Whitehawk, because that is the brand that it is, and, well, also I like birds. But perhaps after three weeks of travel, it is time for that name to change. My cousin Natalie named our RV the Icebreaker, upon saying bon voyage to it and the stinky Mitchells it carries. And indeed, I believe that there it is something glacial about our passage as we tow it across the country, driving the speed limit (or 5 under to burn my gas more efficiently!) while Americans of every stripe rush past me. We visited my family this month, Jehovah’s Witnesses from central Michigan. We arrived on the eve of a craft fair, to a piece of land crowded with sheep, chickens, dogs, beehives and people busy packaging laser cut merchandise. Their yard had been a swamp until the Father of the house filled it in with backfill from a basement and planted it with grass seed. I had to be careful not to run over the head to a well, which looked like little more than an easily crushed clump of...

 Somehow, I found a worse place worse to bird than the Texas Coast in May. I set out with only middling hopes, so am not to be blamed. There’s a spot near here, Haehnle Sanctuary, that looked decent for birds. I drove the seven minutes it took to get there, listeing to country music and feeling strangely nostalgic for my life just a week ago, when my family and I were driving through the south, trying to  find something on the radio that not country. This time, I didn’t flip the channel, not even when the morning DJ asked people to call in about being lost, and they did exactly that. I pulled into Haehnle and parked. It is a well-maintained space, with signage and more benches than I have ever seen at a bird sanctuary. Some sort of a trap, it turns out. For the moment I stepped from the car, I was completely swamped with mosquitoes. They whirled about me, an irritating, incessantly buzzing swarm landing on the few inches of skin I had left exposed on my hands and face....