Lost Among the Birds: Accidentally Finding Myself in One Very Big Year
Depression...is a cruel disease that robs you of your awareness and the motivation to do something about it. It's like a symbiotic organism has crept into your ear, jumped headfirst into the nearest blood vessel, and worked its way deep in your brain. Once there, it fiddles around with the circuitry so that you're not aware of what's happening, and that's when the slow and inexorable slide begins and the color drains out of your world. That dim sense that something is wrong, that things aren't as they used to be, remains a distant feeling. I sat with it for so long that I'd almost forgotten that I was once someone else.
So what do you do about it? Frequently, nothing. Sometimes it lifts on its own, or so I'm told. I'm still waiting for that to happen. Working toward a goal seems to help--I once spent a year getting into shape to go to Hawaii; at the end of that year I was about as mentally healthy as I've ever been. The author helped himself out too, in part by deciding to become a member of the 700 Club.
No, it's not a cult. It's a small group of birders who, following strict rules on what can and can't be counted, identify 700 bird species in one year. It has to be done within the continental U.S.; identification by voice is allowed but birders prefer to see the field marks; but other than that, the rules are self-imposed. It ends up being a public enterprise--you can't see that many birds without a lot of help from others. It seems that there are a lot of people willing to post the sighting of a rare seabird visiting the coast of Alaska, and a lot more people willing to jump on a plane and head there.
Nutcases, you mutter. So do I. But so much fun to read!
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