My late mother Harriet was a pip of a gal.
She banded birds for the federal government, made dandelion wine and rose before dawn to track owl hoots on dark forest trails.
She was a country girl, a naturalist feeling more cozy in barn boots than heels. But that pip of a gal also co-founded the Broome County Naturalists’ Club, served as president of the Central New York Chapter of The Nature Conservancy and chaired the Broome County Environmental Management Council.
Contemplating the breadth of her interests, I am drawn, first and foremost, to her vivacious charm. It defined joie-de-vivre — a bright-eyed, unpretentious personality that made all who met her fall instantly under her spell.
I’ll try to showcase this charisma by recalling how she periodically cleaned out her car. This happened whenever Harriet traded in one vehicle for another — every five years or so because she was very hard on cars.
Upon this occurrence, the birder’s hotline crackled with anticipation. Word spread like wildfire that, once again, Harriet would be transferring a lifetime’s worth of bric-a-brac from one vehicle to another.
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Her friends crowded around to watch the ornithological equivalent of an archaeological dig.
Antiquarians exhibited special interest in this unearthing. They were well aware that items dating back to the dawn of binoculars often surfaced when Harriet probed the netherworld under her seats. Birding neophytes also showed interest. They could watch the entire history of ornithology flash past their eyes as she dug through layers of paraphernalia that lay stratified like sediments on an ancient sea floor.
What might she find? All manner of things. There would be rumpled checklists, plastic cups that had lost their thermos companions and a hand lens for ogling flower parts when birding moments turned slow.
Also exhumed would be topo maps stuffed randomly into a clear plastic valise. Digging…
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