Where the tops of the trees overtake

I’ve written by splitting

ecologists arbitratrily (but not capriciously) posit the beginning 

though inside I’m conceptual

a concept–and all of my energy is yearning towards synthesis.

Like these diaries but

Look! A quail.

and the sea

I’m splitting—I’ve split.

There’s nothing this world wants in terms of bringing things together.  It’s all in the compartments

But look!

These were from a month ago or so—one quail in the hand and many on the ground, 2 I’d banded last year, pair bonded to each other.

On herself she had no pity

……..
quotes are by Charlotte Bronte, Yetman and Van Devender

during the rainy season…the tropical deciduous forest becomes a steaming jungle, a nearly impenetrable wall of a hundred different shades of green

What would you do to capture green?

We drove from Alamos to Tucson on Saturday. I was pretty exhausted and, I will tell you honestly though it embarrasses me, I cried through the first part of the trip. My students insisted on giving me a break (I was reluctant to release control of the wheel) and I, pretty quickly, fell asleep sitting there shotgun, in the death seat, as we drove north in I-15—southern Sonora flashing by.

a sense/that the universe/reveals itself almost transparently

I woke up later and, staring out the window at Mexico, I asked myself why do I love this place so much? And, would I love it so much if I lived here?

an unbalanced undertaking

Probably not, was my answer. I fell in love during those three weeks in Alamos. That is the problem. That is always the problem. Something so startling in how, when we arrived, there was still brown and, when we left, all was so so very green.

(Green plants see me, I can t bear/to see them.)

I know—I am beginning to be repetitive in these posts. Truth is, I cannot seem to convince you of how strange, wondrous, rich and sometimes difficult the whole transformation of that place was. One thing I wonder is if I fell in love with fecundity—or just in love with the quail.

The trees do not think you are crazy./The trees do not consider you at all.

I was so exhausted and sick by the time I reached San Diego that all my body wanted was to sleep. Except…I couldn’t sleep past 5 am and, anyway, the California quail were out.

I am restless in my very heart.

It felt like a sort of home to watch the California quail—I breathed myself right into it, feeling the shift: Here is a species I have some better sense of. There—see that male, I recognize what he is doing. That female…I know her. I do not understand it entirely, but it is comforting, like something I know in a way. I suppose that is what several full years of watching a species day in and day out gives you. I won’t have that opportunity with the Elegant quail, or any other species, at least not anytime soon.

I owe the day its market cries and blue balloon—

I remember trapping California quail on Christmas day. I remember watching them in the rain. They retreated to loaf during the downpour—the Elegant quail walk through the rain and the thunderstorms as though oblivious or as though it did not matter, skirting the edge of the field and heading to roost perhaps a bit early, but when the lightning struck and the thunder, soon after, roared, they did not seem to notice. Though perhaps, like some cats, some quail are made tremulous by the thunder. It would be hard to know.

Stone torsos, the whirling flight of birds, the pas de deux

Two of the male California quail I saw on Sunday and Monday in San Diego had bands they’d received from me last summer during Redención (whether or not it was is still open to debate). I observed what seemed like a sea of males and only a few females—one female was accompanied by at least two males. This is why it was hard for me to sleep in San Diego—I’d stepped into a puzzle that was possibly within my reach were I only to commit the rest of the summer to solving it.

But I kept this recollection to myself, and secret, until the day

I am deluded. It is a gamble like playing slots. I am a quail addict. It is a peculiar ecstasy and an obsession. Do you think it is unhealthy?

For I am not without authority in my jeopardy

And that love thing—more than the quail…there are so many things I fell in love with so my heart broke a little when I left—thus the tears. (Of course, heading south pulled me away from my kids and pets and broke my heart as well…therein lies one of my big problems). I fell in love with the two beaded lizards, the desert tortoise, the leopard frogs, and the unknown species of Myotis. The tarantula spp, the mud, the baby Acacia, the expansive mesquite, open arms, the whip scorpion in the bathroom and the wind scorpion in the pool, the water bug that attacked one of my students, the spiny poppy, the dolphin that swam near me in Navopatia, the frigate birds, the nest-building hooded oriole, and on and on…

I am but mad north-north west: when the wind is southerly

I know I’m being cagey. I’m writing around things. I cannot tell you everything, but yes, the elegant quail are laying eggs in their nests on the ground and the egg predators are out, the snakes, king and otherwise, the beaded lizards, the greater roadrunners. And yes, nests are vanishing also…in a month or so, those fertilized eggs that make it and are incubated appropriately will hatch and the Tropical Deciduous Forest will be alive with baby quail. This is different than the April May of the published accounts but then many things about this bird are different than the published accounts.

I know a hawk from a hand-saw.

It’s also different from the California quail in San Diego, whose babes are already five weeks or so, and the Gambel’s on the Sonoran coast whose babies were two weeks old when we visited the first time, two weeks ago. And different from the Gambel’s in Tucson, reportedly double clutching, with very very young babies, five weeks ago, when I first started my trek to Alamos.

I knew that I would wake up, shelterless, at night or as the day was breaking, not that it mattered

Anyway. There’s a bit—and some of the calls are not what they seem and so on. I’m missing all sorts of things and trying to understand what I am in Mexico and in the field and what I am here. In that space of dislocation and broken heartedness again. I put myself here. Always. I belong inside of it right now. I’ll own it.

for me the shard falls
into the fire, where it returns to the lead
it once was. And behind the bullet
I stand, one-eyed, almost invisible, with a steady aim,
And shoot it towards the morning.

–

Quotes are by Antonin Artaud, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, William Shakespeare, Christopher Smart, Ingeborg Bachmann, Erin Mouré, Yetman and Van Devender

How you landed here, Pitcairned

How I came to be here. How I came, marooned amongst flapping wings and kicking; how I came to be, the tiny gnats landing in my ears, clambering up my nose. How I came, with the warm humid air, the pink in the clouds, the suddenness of the green. Startling green.

This is another one you must learn to pick up:

How I came. And now here. And soon gone

At a certain point one makes a definitive journey it begins with a simple request for provisions.

I hate to use the word “processing,” as in, I’m still processing this, but, to be honest, I’m still processing this.

Just one step between me and my emotions.

This means this trip. The quail the intensity, the fact that nothing is as I might expect; that nothing is its opposite either. That, in these tropics laced with cacti, what I think I know is not quite right.

Your letters all say you’re beside me now

This trip has been amazing

Red in the air—mis ojos y el rojo

I haven’t decided whether that means I’ve been successful. This is the issue I’ve mentioned before—that I can never quite do enough. The joy of this is that, as much as I do, there is always that bit more that, had I been dedicated, diligent or determined enough, I would have achieved.

I saw a mirror and, peering into it,

This is my challenge. To do everything the best I can do and accept what I can’t. Accept, except. The crested caracara, the groove billed ani, the horned lizard. The quail the moon the feel of the breeze the tiny gnats lifted into the air.

I could see an enormous uninhabited valley

My failings aside, somehow I seem to be working with the perfect combination of people at the optimal time. Alone, I’d be alone wading through confusion. Together, we are gathering clues. In the heat, amidst the swarming gnats—up our noses, in our ears, in our eyes.

Said it,/and the toad leapt/onto the table,

Those gnats–I feel as though I’ve my own set of tiny followers, all intent upon garnering some sort of blessing from physical contact with my and the saltiness of my sweat. They weren’t here when we first arrived—they are here because of the rains. When they come out is la hora que ejercicío los manos Every day there are new insects, and exponentially more, the tiny green grasshoppers captured my heart, leaping up as they do, by the hundreds with each step I take.

Able to swim, lucid and self-contained, in that turbulent sea of multiplicity

When I was a girl, I loved Nancy Drew. I’m thinking of her because I am a girl detective in the tropical deciduous forest. In a field truck rather than a light blue convertible; seeking the bird—what makes the bird—rather than the location of a bright green emerald necklace.

The faint smell of fire

The quail never do what I expect. But they never do the opposite either. Their behavior is just different enough to confuse me and intrigue me and make me think that we cannot apply California quail rules to this species. And, of course, my work with California quail has convinced me that we cannot apply general bird rules to California quail.

There are no rules

At a certain time of day a field can blind you.

So, for now, there are no rules, just observations. I’m actively trying to strip away my assumptions. The moments I fail at this are the moments the birds do something that reinforces the fact that I

know nothing

One goes down into the belly of a giant or monster

The birds challenge my assumptions and so do the people I’m working with.

to learn science or wisdom.

All of these people with me toss out ideas, debate their merits, wrestle with observations. These people, the undergraduates from Evergreen, the graduate student from UCR and Felipe Acosta—the owner of Rancho El Palomar—are the reason these three weeks have worked.


I dream I dream/She pulls the dawn with her

We’ve banded and sampled birds, found roosts, identified novel behavior and call functions, discovered a nest and observed unusual mating behavior. We’ve mapped the vegetation on the site.

When I see her she’s haloed in light

We’ve not had a hard rain in nearly a week and the temperature is high, the 80% humidity making it feel higher.

To your body, soft and sopping, to your body/the shame of the sheets that will have to be/wrung out, and to the sheets twisted like a/ loosening noose around your abdomen

I’ve eaten something or perhaps it’s just the heat. And I can never do enough.

To your abdomen—a bowl of baby eels shocking their brothers

I’m resting a bit now, I can never do enough, but I’ll be heading back out this afternoon. I want to look for my banded birds, observe them through a lightly buzzing mist of little insects. We’ll watch the nest and record calls. When night falls, the bats, the nighthawks, the nightjars come out, and the toads and frogs, the gnats are gone and everything around us holds us in its grip.

so tore the light so darkness foundered

I can never do enough. I can.

And tore the darkness so dawn came

quotes are by Eliade, Ackerson-Kiely, Cohen, Bachmann, Bolaño,Martin