Thirty Pounds and a Passport * Part X

A New Home

Arizona wildflowers

November 5 Qantas Airways #25 Aukland, New Zealand to Los Angeles, California

Y2K—it’s been a good year. Flying across the Pacific on an eleven-hour flight in the middle of the night is a good time to sleep and a good time to think and a good time to reflect on the year so far. In my mind the months march by in a collection of short vignettes.

In January we are fighting cold weather and chasing Oldsquaws and other winter ducks at Ocean City, Maryland. In February we escape winter and spend Valentine’s weekend in the Cayman Islands to get our first suntan of the year. In March we pack up the house and give away our furniture. The ranger retires from a fun thirty-year career in the National Park Service and Ms. Shirley finishes over thirty years in accounting and information services. At the end of the month we say goodbye to good friends on the East coast and move out of our home of twelve years. We drive to St. Louis and store all of our worldly possessions except for two duffle bags that travel with us. In April we enjoy South American hummingbirds and travel in canoes on Amazonian rivers. Early May finds us in the Andes of Ecuador and by late May we are watching lions in Botswana. June is being in the middle of an elephant herd late at night and having a picnic in a snow shower on a mountain pass in Lesotho on the edge of the earth. July is hornbills in Malaysia and headhunters in Borneo. August is Sydney Harbor and the mountain rainforests of Sumatra. September brings the far west of Australia from the Kimberley down to the wine regions near Perth. October is wildflowers in the Grampian Mountains of Victoria and koala bears and penguins on Kangaroo Island. November is New Zealand’s mountains, oceans and kiwi birds. November is also visiting family in Missouri and Kansas and, of course, the big move west to Arizona. December is…well, we’ll just have to see what the future brings. Yes, the year 2000 has been good to us.

November 5-6 American Airlines #2770 Los Angeles, California to St. Louis, Missouri

It comes out even—and that’s a good thing. The first rule of air travel is: The number of landings must equal the number of takeoffs. This year we’ve had 59 flights with 69 takeoffs and 69 landings. We’ve come out even. I love it when that happens.

We did sort of violate the second rule of air travel: The takeoff should precede the landing. That seems rather obvious but consider that we left Auckland, New Zealand, at 11:45 pm on November 5th and arrived in Los Angeles at 2:30 pm on November 5th. According to the clock we landed over nine hours before we took off. Maybe crossing the International Date Line had something to do with that.

On all of these flights our luggage was lost only twice but each time was returned the next day. Out of the 59 flights, just one was delayed and that’s not a bad record. Ironically it was the very last flight. After an eleven-hour trip from New Zealand to Los Angeles we were scheduled to have only a two-hour layover before flying on to St. Louis. But a thunderstorm in Dallas, Texas, meant that our plane was two hours late arriving in Los Angeles to pick us up and take us onward. As a consequence we arrived in St. Louis at 1:00 a.m. more than 38 hours since the last time we had seen a bed.

It didn’t come out even—and that’s a good thing. We started out the trip with a stack of dollar bills in the bank. Throughout the trip we accumulated a stack of bills for meals, hotels, rental cars, etc. Luckily the stack of bills is smaller than the stack of dollar bills. I love it when that happens.

November 8-9 U-Haul truck from St. Louis, Missouri to Wichita, Kansas

On the road again! Willie Nelson may sing about it but Ms. Shirley and the ranger are actually doing it. After 7½ months, home sweet home beckons with a siren’s song. We have not seen our new Green Valley house since we bought it two years ago. Will it look the way we remember it?

American Airlines #2770 landed in St. Louis at 1:00 a.m. and two spaced-out aliens descended to earth. Who are these travelers with the glassy eyes and haggard faces? Seven hours later after a comfortable bed, they’ve changed into two long-lost Americans out running errands and preparing for another journey. U-Haul is glad to see us again.

Barely 56 hours after landing in St. Louis, it is time to round up the U-Haul truck and corral all the boxes. From early morning to early afternoon we fill up the 24-foot truck bed and load the red pickup on the trailer again. Thanks Harry for taking the day off from work to help! It’s 1:30 p.m. and the loaders are tired but satisfied. We’ve managed to get everything in before the promised rain drops arrive.

“Wichita is 425 miles away. If we leave this afternoon, we can drive a little while and break up the trip.”

A “little while” ends being 125 miles to Colombia, Missouri. The U-Haul driver and the Pontiac tagging behind are tired. A good night’s sleep will cure aches and pains and weary souls. Then breakfast brings a wet surprise. The few raindrops of the previous afternoon are now a light rain in Colombia. In mid-November that is never a good sign in Missouri—the land of ice storms.

On the road again—slowly. A wet road with a U-Haul truck pulling a trailer and driven by a novice U-Haul driver is not the best combination. Fifty miles per hour is fast enough even on the interstate with the windshield wipers going slip, SLAP, slip, SLAP, slip, SLAP! Twenty miles out of town and into the Missouri hills, the rain becomes ice pellets and snow flurries begin hitting the windshield. Soon snow blows across the highway accenting the black ice on the pavement. Forty miles per hour is now more prudent. Steeper grades show more snow on the road shoulders and a five-mile stretch of road reveals eight vehicles off the road, four of them large trucks. Thirty miles per hour and sometimes twenty now becomes the pace. The weather radio says that it will clear at Kansas City but that’s still 100 miles away. Creep, creep, creep for three hours, slowly down the road we go. Finally the ice pellets stop, the snow quits and, sure enough, the pavement is dry by Kansas City. We quicken the pace and the sun comes out just as we hit the Kansas state line.

Two nights in Wichita are a welcome stop and a good visit with the ranger’s family. There is even an early Thanksgiving dinner for us. The ranger loves birds and today the turkey is just the right bird.

November 11-12 U-Haul truck from Wichita, Kansas to Green Valley, Arizona

Back on the interstate highways go the U-Haul truck, tag-along trailer and tag-behind Pontiac with Ms. Shirley following her ranger as she has done for so many months—and years. The U-Haul does fine on the interstate. Given a long smooth stretch it will roll along at 60 mph or better. Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and eastern New Mexico are flat, the better to roll. The gas pedal sits flat on the floor the whole trip. There is no worry about exceeding the speed limit. This truck doesn’t have that many horses.

Interstate highways have many overpasses. Farm roads and byways are crossed with overpasses. No matter how flat the countryside or how much head of steam the truck has, every overpass is a mountain to the U-Haul. At every overpass the truck loses five to ten miles of speed that will take several miles to regain on the other side. The constant changing of speed is wearying to the Pontiac driver who would rather just set the cruise control and relax.

The ranger grew up on the Great Plains and knows its subtle beauty. But even he has to admit that seen from an interstate highway in the month of November, the country is less than totally exciting. He keeps alert by looking for possible new birds to add to the year’s list. He is rewarded with Prairie Falcons and Western Meadowlarks in Oklahoma; Sandhill Cranes in Texas; and White-throated Swifts, Chihuahuan Ravens and Common Ravens in New Mexico.

There is no good place to stop for the night in the western plains in winter. Amarillo, Texas, is a convenient distance from Wichita but the Texas panhandle is noted for sudden blizzards. The ranger wants no part of any more ice. The radio says there is a chance of light snow the next morning in eastern New Mexico. There is nothing to do but keep on trucking. Albuquerque is the rest stop of choice. The caravan stops for the night 800 miles from its Wichita beginning. It has been a long day.

The next morning, Albuquerque’s radio says that the night’s “light snow” in eastern New Mexico amounted to four inches. We've dodged a bullet this time. At last we are beyond the snowstorms.

Turning south from Albuquerque we follow the Rio Grande the length of the state. Lunch is a hamburger in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, a town named after a television show. In 1950 a TV network offered a prize to any town that would change its name to that of the popular television program. Hot Springs, New Mexico, did and claimed the prize. When the show went off the air, the town liked its unique name and just kept it.

By Las Cruces, New Mexico, the cold winter temperatures of St. Louis, Wichita, and the Great Plains are left behind. We are down to shirtsleeves in mid-day and loving it. When we turn west on I-10 the truck seems to sense our eagerness to be home. It actually speeds up a little across the dry lakes of southwest New Mexico. The Arizona state line in late afternoon brings a cheer and a long honk on the horn. “No lady, I’m not trying to pass. I’m just glad to be back in the West!”

Saguaro cacti are the most beautiful sight in the world. The ranger is home and every saguaro along the roadside seems to wave a welcome. Tucson is passed at sunset. Only thirty miles to go. We pull into Green Valley just as the last of the alpine glow fades on the Santa Rita Mountains. Those are my mountains. They’re in my backyard. We are HOME!

We’ll stay in a motel tonight; it is too late to unload. But we can’t wait to take a peek at the house. It’s beautiful. It’s just like we remembered it. Or at least part of it is like the ranger remembered and part of it is like what Ms. Shirley remembered. It seems that husbands and wives have different remembering systems. I wonder why that is.

In the morning, our first morning in Green Valley, Ms. Shirley cannot get out of bed. She is sick. Anything that moves hurts. Anything that doesn’t move is threatening to hurt. Her stomach wants to say goodbye to yesterday’s lunch in the worst way—the very worst way. We have traveled for almost eight months with strange food, unclean water and certainly imperfect sanitation, yet we were never ill other than a slight discomfort every now and then and the ranger’s weeklong cough in Malaysia. Now that we are in the good old USA, Shirley has the bug. It seems that hamburger in Truth or Consequences gave Shirley the consequences.

So the ranger gets to unload the U-Haul by himself. At mid-day he picks up Ms. Shirley at the motel and carries her to bed in her new home. And then he unloads some more.

All’s well that ends well and in a few days Ms. Shirley is back to her perky self. An ocean of boxes awaits. The boxes fill the garage and overflow into the house. One by one the contents disappear into closets, drawers and shelves. Within a week the Pontiac can go into the garage but the pickup is banished to the street for a month until all the boxes are gone. But amazingly quickly the house becomes a home.

There is more to life than unpacking and more to Green Valley than just a house. Within days Ms. Shirley and the ranger are off exploring their new world with walks and drives. The ranger’s birthday is a good excuse for a picnic in a saguaro grove. And of course, the ranger is still counting birds. It may be almost December but the year is yet young. The millennial list has passed 2250. How high can it go?

Looking over the year’s list the ranger realizes that he has missed many common birds because he was out of the United States from April through mid-November. A number of birds came and went in that time. It would be embarrassing to have a year list over 2200 and not find a Willet or Long-billed Dowitcher or Western Grebe, especially since these winter along the Mexican coast only three hours south of Green Valley.

“Shirley, honey, dearest, sweetest, what do you think about taking a trip to Mexico before the end of the year? There is some beautiful country there. We could go down a thousand miles to some jungle and find new birds. There will be good seafood and we won’t have to eat chicken all the time. Think about it.”

“Ranger, honey, dearest, sweetest, I don’t have to think about it. I’m going nowhere. I’m home! Have a good trip.”

December 3-6 Road travel from Green Valley to San Blas, Nayarit, Mexico

Crossing into Mexico in early December is no simple matter. It is the Christmas season and thousands of Mexican citizens are returning home for the holidays from jobs in the United States. The ranger and his red pickup truck are just one more ant in a long line of ants. Processing papers for immigration and customs requires three hours of patient standing in the warm Mexican sun. By noon formalities are over and the ranger heads south enjoying tejano music on the radio.

Eight hours south of the border is Alamos, a cultural treasure in the mountains of Sonora. Alamos once had silver and all the glory rich silver mines could provide. There was a time when daughters of prominent families imported their wedding gowns from Europe. In one spectacular wedding the bride is reported to have walked on bars of silver from her house to the church. The small city was wealthy and its buildings showed it. Alamos’ wonderful church La Parroquia de la Purisima Concepcion was begun in 1786 during the colonial era and completed in 1826.

During the time of Mexican independence and for a century afterwards Mexico was frequently torn apart by civil and revolutionary wars. This period of history was both unkind and beneficent to Alamos. All too often the prominent families of Alamos backed the losing side in these wars. As a result the church was looted and the leading families fled to other parts of Mexico including today’s Tucson. Alamos’ population plummeted as history was seen to hurl a cruel blow at the city. However, because the city’s population dropped so low, little change occurred through the next century and today Alamos is preserved as a time capsule of an earlier time. The city is now designated a cultural landmark by the state of Sonora.

Here the ranger comes to add to his millennial list and to enjoy the slower pace of small-town Mexico. The hills outside of town have Streaked-backed Orioles and a wonderful singer with the delightful name of Happy Wren. In the evening, the market plaza and the Parque de Alameda provide the fun of strolling young people, an old man with a guitar, and great handmade tamales. Many people say that the most beautiful girls in Mexico come from Alamos. They will get no argument from the ranger as he watches the tableau unfold. Soft guitar music on a warm evening in the park will always make the girls seem prettier.

Topolobampo, a name that bounces off the tongue, is a Mexican fishing village. Here the ranger walks among the boats to see what today’s catch has brought. Obviously the nets have been lucky today and tonight the cantinas will be lively. These men know to enjoy the bounty of the sea when it comes and to tighten the belt when it does not. Today is today and tomorrow is not yet here.

Outside of town the mangrove flats and shallow bays provide a bounty for the birding ranger. His list fills quickly with water birds: plovers, sandpipers, gulls, terns, ibis, egrets, and even a stork.

San Blas, Nayarit, a thousand miles from Green Valley, lies south of the Tropic of Cancer. The ranger is back into jungle again. Another fishing village provides a base of operations as the ranger walks quiet roads in search of parrots, parakeets, woodcreepers, and hummingbirds.

One of the most intriguing birds here is the Russet-crowned Motmot. These are large birds, fourteen inches from tip of beak to tip of tail. The motmot’s two central tail feathers are much longer than the others. On these two the feather barbs are weak along the middle portion of the shaft and the barbs break off easily when the bird preens. The effect is that adult birds have two tail feathers that have a naked shaft halfway down with fully-feathered tips. The tail looks like a tennis racquet. Frequently the motmot is seen sitting on a branch swinging its fancy tail back and forth sideways like a clock pendulum.

Evenings in San Blas are restaurants on the plaza with music—always music. The ranger has traveled all around the world yet here are the most exotic of foods and music just two days drive from his Green Valley home. The only thing missing is his bride. So the ranger heads north again with 62 more birds on the list. Another day in the jungle would produce even more new birds but there is something calling more loudly than any birdcall. The call of home is the most seducing call of all.

December 7-9 Road travel from San Blas to Green Valley, Arizona

Mexico was a success for birds. The millennial birdlist is higher than the ranger ever dreamed it would be. Unpacking boxes, shopping for Christmas in a new town, decorating the tree, enjoying Christmas Day, two day trips for birds and lots of walks fill up the last two weeks of December.

And as quick as that, it’s December 31, the last day of the year. New Year’s Eve is spent watching the sunset on the Santa Rita Mountains, having a glass of wine and enjoying a quiet evening. Shortly before midnight, coyotes sing in the arroyo and call us out into the star-bright night. At 12:00 a single Roman candle in the distance signals the new year.

“Listen. Can you hear an owl? It could be the first bird of the new year!”

“Hey you silly ranger, come on in. Let’s go to bed.”

Final Tally for 2000

Eastern & Central United States 162
Cayman Islands 49
Ecuador 669
Africa 490
Asia 381
Australia 398
New Zealand 67
U-Hauling West 6
Arizona 65
Mexico 62

Total 2349