I didn't want to go

I didn't want to go. I really didn't want to go.

The morning began with my third therapy session. It was rough. I said I had no life other than manic depression. Some unexpected stuff came up: The drowning death of my younger brother Lee a few years ago. I came apart -- tears and sobs.

The temperature was going to reach an unseasonable 60 degrees. Although I had a bicycle and a car, I told my therapist I would sit at home and do nothing but feel sad -- brood on my illness. She asked, and I told her all the places I might go.

As I drove home, I thought about loading up my binoculars, spotting scope, day pack, field guides and heading for Moraine View State Park -- about twenty minutes from my house. Strong south winds might have brought migrating waterfowl to Dawson Lake within the park.

I found and packed the gear when I got home. But I didn't want to go. I really didn't want to go. So I drank coffee and smoked cigarettes while I downloaded and read E-mail.

Too tired, too worn, too sick to go.

But I forced myself to eat lunch, load the car and head out. Sparrows darted from cornfield-to-cornfield crossing just in front of my car with perfect timing.

I am a menace on the roads trying to identify birds, trees, wildflowers and grasses as I speed by.

I got to Dawson Lake and drove around it until I found the only open patch of water. I set up my scope on one of the unused picnic tables. Strong wind in my face, hazy sky. Green-winged teal, mallards, American wigeon, lesser scaup, wood duck, Canada goose -- all old friends. Such a clamor.

"Honk", said the courting male geese. "Hink," replied the females. Honk-hink-honk-hink-honk-hink so rapidly as to sound like one giant bird.

And then I saw it. A yellowish-cream forehead and pate, gray-speckled flanks and back, rufous-brown neck and head, a small blue bill with a black tip -- other field marks and observations I hurriedly scribbled down.

Such joy to find and identify a creature or plant -- life -- you have never seen, made more precious by its rarity.

This bird, this bird here in Central Illinois...

Along came a pickup with a worker from the Department of Natural Resources that manages the park. He asked what I had, and when I told him he gave me the phone number of the president of the Audubon Society in Bloomington-Normal.

Two dogs ran onto the ice as we chatted, and all the birds leaped into the air.

An observer, a witness to something rare and sacred -- I reluctantly loaded up. I raced home in half the time it took to get to Dawson Lake hoping the Audubon president would rouse another birder to verify my sighting.

We talked briefly. She said she would make calls.

My bird, the bird I had seen was an Eurasian wigeon, a duck, - an occasional winter wanderer to North America from Europe or Asia seen on the coasts but seldom inland. My sighting was maybe the twentieth this century in Illinois.

My bird was the 309th species I have identified in fifteen years of birding.

I didn't want to go. I really didn't want to go. I could have surrendered to depression and sat home. But I pushed myself to that lake, on that day, at that time, and I beheld a miracle.

Copyright 1997, Bud Polk