Some things that may seem awkward or even intrusive, things that can seem like making work out of something that’s supposed to be pleasure, can shift to become meaningful.
Consider lists and listing.
I got interested in birds when I was 3 years old. No family member shared the interest — no parent, brother or sister; no aunt, uncle or cousin; no grandparent — so it was an interest that I pursued on my own.
Basically, I was oblivious to the birding world until I was 20. A fellow birder approached me at a reservoir where I was looking at ducks. We chatted and he showed me the first field guide I had ever seen.
It was Roger Tory Peterson’s “A Field Guide to Birds.” Inside was a listing of all the birds in the eastern U.S. with a blank before each name so that once you saw a bird you could check it off.
The idea only casually interested me for many years. Keeping a checkmark list and fussing about dates and places seemed to degrade the pleasure of engaging birds.
Bit by bit, awakening by awakening, that perspective shifted.
When I realized that birds depend on plants and that both birds and plants depend on insects, I became fascinated with the idea of engaging other wildlife to the same degree that I engaged birds.
My biggest awakening came when I realized that traveling the world to see koalas and kiwis, pandas and pangolins was neither realistic nor achievable in my life.
But seeing all the wildlife of Colorado was realistic and was far more achievable.
And lists became vital to make it happen.
To find all the moonworts and monkeyflowers in Colorado, all the minnows and the mints, I needed to know how many different kinds live in the state and where to go to find them. The essential tool for these steps is a list.
Looking over my lists, I could simultaneously know what I had found and what I had not found. This set up the next set of lists: those that tally what I have not seen.
Backpacking and hiking and camping became ways to shorten the lists of what I have not seen and lengthen the lists of what I have. Hiking became a purposeful way to engage Life more meaningfully rather than merely walking through it.
Conceived in the spirit of fun, new lists emerged.
How many birds, how many snakes, how many wildflowers have I seen on Pawnee National Grassland? In Lory State Park? In my yard? Such lists clarify the wildlife diversity of special places.
How many bird species have been found in Larimer County and how many of them have I found? In how many counties have mountain bluebirds been found? In how many counties have all three bluebird species been found?
Lists provide the answers because rather than being burdens that degrade the pleasure of seeing wildlife they are tools by which we can maintain keen memories and decide where to go next. Lists serve us like an SPS — a “Spiritual Positioning System.”
Maybe this is the year you shift and welcome lists as a part of your wildlife experiences.
