Plants and Birds: Things I Can't Tell You
Somebody asked me last week what kind of hawk was sitting on the fence post near the trailhead. I said I don't know. She waited a second, like I was going to follow it up with a guess. I didn't have one.
I get this question a lot. What's that plant with the yellow flowers. What bird keeps making that noise up in the scrub oak. Is that a hawk or something else. I've stopped pretending. I know the loop itself pretty well by now, where it climbs, where it's rutted, where the ice sits longest in January. I don't know the names of most things growing or flying next to it.
I used to feel like I should. Like leading a walking group meant I ought to have a small nature-guide voice in my back pocket, the one that says "that's a Great Basin something-or-other" and everyone nods. I don't have that voice. I tried faking it for a while early on, and it felt bad, like I was handing people something I hadn't earned. So I quit.
What I do instead
I point at the thing and say I don't know, and then, if someone in the group happens to know, I let them answer. That's it. That's the whole system.
It works better than you'd expect. On any given walk there's usually somebody who gardens, or grew up on a farm somewhere, or just reads about birds for fun, and they'll say "that's a scrub jay" or "that's rabbitbrush, it blooms late" and I learn something too. I'm not the only teacher on the loop. I just run the schedule.
If you want to actually learn the plants and birds around here, a few things will get you further than I can:
Take a picture. Your phone probably has some plant-ID thing built in now, or you can download one. It's not perfect, it'll misidentify sagebrush as fifteen other silvery shrubs, but it gets you in the neighborhood. Look the picture up when you get home, not mid-walk. Stopping to squint at your screen slows the group and annoys the people who came to walk, not to wait.
Notice, don't collect. I'd rather you actually look at the plant, the shape of the leaves, how it grows out of the ground, than snap a photo and move on without really seeing it. That's a preference, not a rule. Some people like the collecting part. That's fine too.
Ask the group, not me. I mean this. Somebody in this group knows more than I do about almost everything except how to build a slow loop and keep your shoulders down. Use them.
Leave things where they are. If you're the type to pick a flower or a piece of sagebrush to take home and identify later, fine, but check first that it's not on private property, and don't strip a plant bare for one sample. One sprig tells you what you need.
The January morning that had nothing to do with any of this
I said a few lessons back that rain or shine is non-negotiable but ice gets modified. There was a January morning where the loop was solid ice, the kind where you can hear your boots skating instead of stepping, and I still showed up because I'd said rain or shine and I meant it.
Two people came. We didn't do the normal loop, we did a shuffle version, feet flat, short steps, arms out a little for balance, and it took about forty minutes to cover what usually takes twenty-five. Nobody was looking at plants or birds that morning. Nobody was talking about pace or posture either. We were just three people getting across ice without falling down, which turned out to be plenty.
I've thought about that morning more than almost any other one we've had. Not because anything got answered. Because nothing needed to. It was just cold and slow and we did it anyway, and afterward it felt like one of the better mornings I can remember, better than plenty of the sunny ones where I had something clever to say.
I bring that morning up here because it's a good reminder that the loop doesn't require me to know things. It requires me to show up and put one foot in front of the other, same as everybody else. The bird on the fence post doesn't care that I can't name it. It's just sitting there being a bird. I can respect that without labeling it.
My daughter asked me a while back why the foothills are brown when the mountains are green, and I didn't have a good answer for that either, and I said so in an earlier lesson. This is the same shape of thing. I'm fine not knowing. I'd rather stand next to something I can't name and just look at it than pretend I've got it handled.
Before next time
If something on the trail catches your eye, plant or bird or anything else, take a picture and ask the group what it is. Somebody probably knows. If nobody does, we'll just keep walking past it, curious, which isn't the worst way to go through a mile and a half.