i have done cold. i have done wind. i have done surveys.  i will not do cold and wind and surveys in the same night again. 

take 1991, for example.  i was at the canadian border, stopping every half-mile until i couldn’t feel my toes.  it was -18 f and i just wanted to determine if owls sang during real cold weather.  perhaps they did but i didn’t stick around to find out.  hypothermia subsided somewhere around lutsen.

hypothermia was a constant companion during my formative owling years and it wasn’t just me.

in 1993, i was interviewed by jason davis as part of his “on the road” series and though i tried to warn him, he insisted a bomber jacket and loafers would be enough to stay warm on an early april night in the middle of the boreal forest.   the temperature dropped to 10 degrees and i still remember the unique clatter of his teeth as he and his loafers left to suck down several shots of jaegermeister at the blue fin in tofte.

the message here?  always trust an owlman.  

i have two survey routes left in round one of surveys and 8 days to do them.  i think i should be okay, but the forecast is looking like unseasonable cold will be my companion for the next week or so, which can mean only one thing…the skiing is going to be awesome.  in fact, i just got back from a 22 km jaunt and now for entertainment, am watching not direct tv, but for little owls silhouettes, flittering amongst the bare limbed aspen. 

if the boy i heard the other night has found a muse, he will be back.  if on the other hand, he was simply testing the reproductive waters during a brief interlude on his springtime migration, he could be in thunder bay by now. 

and seriously…he just started singing.

how cool is that? 

i won’t do cold and wind and surveys, but i will do cold and wind and owls in my back yard.

in the 8 years i have thrived/floundered/reveled/hidden in my little house nestled beneath the eroded dome of mount oberg, i have watched my prized stand of aspen become less and less of a presence. most of the big, 20+ inch diameter trees are gone, leaving a center-rot infested collection of skinny, canopy-poor trees in their place. on the ground, balsam fir is well on its way to choking out all vegetation beneath them.

decadent aspen are an amazing resource.  they serve as both home and dinner plate to pileated, downy, and hairy woodpeckers, flickers and sapsuckers. last year, three of those five species nested within close proximity to one another and at fledging time, my back yard was noisier than an auction house.  two years ago, a pair of pileateds decided the cavity selection was substandard and so, created a new home and weeks later, pushed out 3 youngsters into the boreal forest.  the year before, a male and female saw-whet set up shop for several nights, but left when they realized they would likely need a restraining order against the owl biologist living below them.

last night, i was sitting and wondering if a survey was in my best interests when the winds picked up and made my decision for me.  i am not a decider so, thank you gods of low pressure for the more-than subtle free pass from surveys.

i went to bed at a reasonable hour and was just about to sleep, when my eardrums picked up sound:  monotonous toots of a truck backing up at the tops of my aspen. i scrambled to the deck and sure enough, in the same cavity the pileateds had used to raise their young in 2009, a male saw-whet sang his song of surging testosterone. 

it’s nice that when i can’t go to the owls, they sometimes come to me.

i was spring-loaded.

eager.

after 6 hours of sleep, i injected a bowl of oatmeal and then made for the freshly groomed trails of the sugarbush…in what turned out to be one of the best 22 km skis i’ve had this winter. 

perfect grooming more than makes up for imperfect technique.   

saturday was to be the night of the supermoon.  the forecast said “a good night for owling.”  except it really said “go with your hunches nocturnal sage, because the weather will be dicey tonight.”

i like the structure and routine of owling.  i know the pacing of a survey day, the drive time to the starting point and when the crepuscular magic will be most inticing…when the owls are getting busy, they are getting busy well before dark.    

late in the afternoon, a thin wisp of clouds obscured the supersun and the winds picked up.  i anxiously paged through the nws forescast and the trend, according to my simian interpretation, suggested it might not be a good night for early season owling.   

from the window, i watched spindly spruce announce the bullying arrival of a low pressure system and decided to forego my supermoon survey. it wasn’t a tough decision, but points out how quickly the ambience of owling can change.

some of my best nights of owl observation have occurred during the worst weather.  nesting goes on because  the perfect strigidaen storm of hormones and habitat and prey availability converge during march and april.  but, experiencing the perfect storm means i first need to find the owls.  surveys are where i do just that.

without surveys, i wouldn’t have been able to sit beneath a boreal owl cavity tree in 1992 in 30 mph winds, while observing a quick, 4 second bout of owl copulation, then painfully realizing it was only 10 seconds less than my best effort.  in 1995, i lay in my sleeping bag during a heavy snowfall and watched 4 hours of  owl magic, even though that included nearly 3.97 hours of nothing happening (think ice fishing).  that same night, a browsing snowshoe hare hopped over my feet on its quest for the perfect hazel bud.  only when i moved was it aware that a dashing, bipedal predator could have had it for supper.     

nocturnal owl behavior is fascinating because one needs to see and hear it repeatedly to understand “when i hear this…the owls do this…”  these aren’t your ostentatious, diurnal species of the oak savannah with their haughty bright colors and extravagant flights and hours of slow-motion video to review.  no, these are cryptically plumed silhouettes, relying on sound and often moving without the observer knowing they have done so.  

they represent the perfect challenge during nights that are often, less-than perfect.

once there are owls, there are owlers…each in his or her own little, seasonally-inflated bubble of owl wonderment. 

sometimes though, the sharp needle of reality has a tendency to burst an owler’s bubble.  i think that happened to me last night. 

there i was, all caffeined up and chock-full of non-nutritive foodstuffs, swaddled in three layers of stinky fleece.  it was perfect.  it was the night before the super moon and the weather had two thumbs up, written all over it.  plus, there has been owls.

so far this season, i have experienced contentment, dare i say bliss, during my nocturnal immersions.  i feel like a springtime participant again, and not the indentured servant whose sole function was to make the forest service look like they were doing their job. 

yet, even on the nights when a real job isn’t looming with the next sunrise and i can dawdle into the wee hours, it helps to have some acoustical accompaniment during my nocturnal forays… just a song or two, some chatter, perhaps a bit of owl squabble to let me know there is a purpose behind my owling obsessiveness.  i was hoping for that last night, but came painfully short of my goal. 

interestingly, on my route last night, i was able to rekindle the excitement i felt during my early years when surveys were heavy on discovery.  i could remember the intact landscape and me coursing through it in archaic outerwear, intent on figuring things out.   those nights were data sheet-filling expeditions into the unknown, when i first recognized the pattern and connectivity between owl song and owl behavior.  but even then, there were nights when nothing sang, nothing demanded attention, nothing happened. 

silent nights were wholly nights that were highly unwelcome.

sorry.

it was a beautiful night last night and yet, i was disappointed when it ended at 0100.  i felt fine and mentally sharp.  my back had yet to seize up on me (a function of hours of standing immobile in the middle of the road, like a doofus) and the caffeine provided mental acuity and an everlasting ability to scent mark the night. 

yet, only one (lowly) barred owl provided diversion. 

in my 5 hours, i did not see or hear another person.  my thoughts did not wander.  i was focused on where i was and why i was there.  i was content. 

in this my 25th owl spring, i am coming to grips with my owling and so, i am coming to grips with myself at a time when i really need to do just that.  

it feels good to be in my bubble again.

next:  when supermoons go bad.

the landscape was perfectly still last night.

nothing stirred. 

the snowglobe reconsidered its purpose.

i love nights like this, early in the season.  they set the threshold for acoustical acceptance.  even distant saw-whet songs carry unfettered to the land-based listener.

purpose.

i can’t state that enough.  noise must have purpose for it to be removed from the category of noise.

often on still nights, when there are no sounds, my mind creates them for me.  i hear the saw-whet, the boreal, the great gray. i go to sleep with monotonous toots and ascending stacattos lulling my brain to complacency.     

before midnight, i was standing in one of my favorite areas of many favorite areas.  i don’t need to bore you with whimsical retellings of “once, there were owls here”, but once, there were owls there. 

i stood in bright moonlight, in the sharp shadows of spring. 

my hearing was perfectly focused.

in the distance, i heard the sound of rushing water where no water existed.  

the roar of meltwater grew, then raised above the plain of the earth.  limbs creaked, and the initial gusts of an advancing coldfront slapped against my skin with pulses of pure air.

it was invigorating and sensually complete.  sound, touch, sight, smell.

no owls, but that was okay.

twenty seconds into my first stop last night, a saw-whet sang from a clump of aspen on the distant side of a recent ahh…”anthropogenic disturbance.” 

twenty seconds into my fourth stop, the winds picked up and owl song was lost. 

the harmonics of wind through limbs of fir and spruce and pine creates acoustic chaos.  you swear you hear song, yet it is not the organized song of a plaintive male owl. there is no pattern. pattern begets detection begets purpose (for an owler in the north woods during a march night). 

once upon a time, the area i surveyed was a vast, contiguous stretch of boreal forest. contiguous forest, however, appears to have been misplaced over the past two decades. 

pulpwood.  windstorms. gravity. 

many places i visit i could apply the same description and for me, change in the landscape has mostly been unforgiving.  i want every thing to be the way it was when i had unbounded exuberance and rewards for my 10 hours in the night. 

 nothing ever hurts as much as it did when the pain occurred.  owling is never as good as it once was. 

anecdotes are my polaris now.  they will guide me and be honed and crafted and i am sure, retold over and over again.  somewhere in the archives of my blogs, my old posts probably bear that out.

 “didn’t he say that somewhere else?”

 “why yes. yes i did.  thank you for noticing.”

 just one boreal, for old time’s sake.

refamiliarizing myself with the night takes only a few seconds.  

orbits of acoustics and olfaction.  

even though it is 2 miles away, lake superior creates a grumbling background noise.  distant pulses of waves into rock.

 moonlight.

 the musk of mustellids lingers like the smoke of an extinguished candle.

 the landscape is locked deep beneath snow and ice.  the spring thaw has begun, but bare earth is weeks away.  within pronounced watersheds, the pressure of moving water can be felt.  there is nothing acoustic about it.  winter groans its surrender.

twenty five years.

twenty minutes into the night, with a fog hanging close to the road, a saw-whet owl sings lazily.  “hey baby…i got the goods.  uh huh.” 

there is no hurry on my first night back.  there are no vehicles in mad transit.  no ambience, save for that created by an overworked forest on a mid-march evening, when spring makes her presence known. 

i think of boreals.  i am unable to do otherwise. 

 at the top of a draw i pause, then hear the deep, booming bass of a great gray.  it is heard and felt on still air.

at midnight, the winds pick up and the temperature rises 4 degrees.  the fog is gone. a fox yelps, then marks his territory.   

when i tuck my data sheets away, i am content.  there were no boreals, but the great gray served as a reminder of the way things were.   

for some reason, knowing that i don’t have to survey makes surveying all the more palatable. 

at least for one night.

on march 25, 1987, on a night claustrophobic with clouds and darkness, i sat in my truck at the end of a stretch of asphalt.  with lights off, nothing was familiar and in an instant, i became a stranger in a strange land.   

months of preparation and apprehension and procrastination stirred in my cerebral blender.  i knew what i was going to do, yet had not fully come to accept why i was going to do it. 

with the engine shut off, i stepped out of the overheated cab and stood alone in the cold and the dark.  i was the only person in the world. 

with that tentative first step my life changed irrevocably.  

since then, i have spent the past 24 springs  listening for songs and calls of purpose.  owl songs in an owl spring.  

darkness. moonlight. sickness. health. life. death. joy. despair. depression. elation. contempt. lucidity. wisdom. disdain. exuberance. bliss. confusion.

 the privilege has not been lost on me. 

to put it all into perspective, consider this:  since 1987, i have surveyed over 7,000 miles in 0.5 mile increments; 3 minutes per stop or well over 14,000 stops in a sometimes noisy, and sometimes silent landscape.  i have spent 40 (plus) consecutive 24-hour periods simply listening for owls.  throw in radio telemetry, behavior indexing, nest visits, nest box construction, banding and damn, it’s no wonder i am completely dysfunctional outside of the owling season. 

2011 will be my 25th year.  or will it? 

my passion has eroded and i am easily distracted. the boreal owl, the focus of my passion is largely gone now and i have had a hard time dealing with its absence. once, the owl was a constant nocturnal companion.  now, my surveys have turned into saw-whet extravaganzas.  trucks backing up in the night….the beep beep beeps of hormonally-charged cavity nesters. 

little bastards. 

funding from the forest service is gone. they have dangled a vehicle at me for 2011, but i consider it an insult.  they clamor for my data knowing that without it, there is no federal finger on the pulse that is the northern forest owl community.  take a look at the national forest management act of 1978 and you will see what is required of those in the khaki and green.  all along, i guess i have been doing much of their work for them. 

for most of the winter, while immersed in sweat-induced nordic jaunts or just sitting in my chair, i have come perilously close to saying “fuck it.”  i have sought counsel.  i have tried to be a strigidaen optimist.  i couldn’t make up my mind on whether to continue. 

then the answer came and it seemed easy. 

i have to do it for me.

my turkey soup is delicious and yet…

i feel so dirty.

i ordered satellite tv.

i needed to do something positive for myself.  and tv was it.

no thai hookers, no bombay sapphire, no new skis.

i have had this debate numerous times before…usually just as winter sets in and the hallowed halls of my memory think of hockey and football and how those sports have vanished from my life.  so…

i also ordered nhl center ice.  40 games a week. 

which seems like way too much hockey.  and it isn’t just the hockey…

i also get the byu channel.   

distraction is all i seek.

and all that hockey won’t interfere with my skiing, as the 8 km i put in this afternoon on absolutely sucky trails will suggest.  last year, my first ski was on the 22nd of december.  this year, i’m already over 50 k.  i’m ahead of the game.

plus, i seem to be easily bored/unfocused since love got lost.

i think the byu channel will help me with that.

now,  if only the food network could taste my soup.

sometimes, things happen. there is alignment.  the hand fits the glove.

when i stirred this morning, my legs felt shortened.  muscles complained.  every attachment point for every leg tendon protested aloud. 

early season k’s will do that to an unseasoned athlete. 

i believe i am that person.  still.

despite the ambulatory alarms and a lazy, off-grid day in the forecast, i made it to the mount oberg trailhead at 11:30. 

i had to ski, dammit.

i was surprised to see but one vehicle in the parking lot.   i thought the lot would be full of those with the same “fever” that has coursed my system for the past week.  i moved to the trailhead and connected boots and skis.  the only other skier on the system approached and asked about the trails.

“fuck,”  i thought to myself….”if there are two blackbirds on a phone line do they perch next to one another?  no they spread out.”

happy thoughts.  put away mr. sour.

“oh….they’re good”, i said,  “but, the grooming has been a bit confusing so far.  it’s our first early season, skiable system since 2005, and the grooming has been virtually non-existant.  that said…i skied it yesterday and it’s pretty dang good.”

the first 100 m of the road are slightly downhill.  i pushed off, double poling, and the stranger followed.  glide begets gossip and so, we engaged in conversation.

he worked at the university of minnesota in plant pathlogy.  he has his doctorate.  he loves to ski.  his family has a cabin on caribou lake. 

“do you know linda kinkel?” i asked.

“i work in the lab next to her.”

linda is the wife of my m.s. advisor, dr. david andersen.

“surely, you know peter jordan?” i asked axed.

“i live right down the street from peter.”

then he asked “do you know john tester?”

at that point, i felt wellings of something…i don’t know… perhaps they were sentimental reconnections…but john tester…make that dr. john tester, was one of the faculty members at the u who was instrumental in getting my sorry ass into grad school.  he encouraged. he asked questions.  he saw the passion in me, nevermind the confused, sometimes academically bereft student i tended to be.

same for peter jordan.  same for bud tordoff.  same for gary duke….all names that my serendipitious skiing partner knew of and had rubbed elbows with, both professionally and socially.  and intrinsically, he knew of all the lives those individuals have shaped and melded and twisted and turned into functional erudites.

my facebook page has a number of friends i met in grad school while john tester and peter jordan and david andersen and pat redig and bud tordoff and gary duke and francie cuthbert were doing their work… just before sending us down the perilous path of reality. 

those were some outstanding classmates who are now renowned  teachers and scientists and philanthropists and fathers and mothers and role models and brothers and sisters and periodic senders of amusing, reconnective, affirming e-mails. the same classmates who never seem to be satisfied with their last achievement.   

meanwhile, i am humble and insecure and like to ski.

at the trail head, after our 11 km ski, i shook jim’s hand and said good-bye. 

i would have missed this had i been 5 minutes early or 5 minutes late. 

when the snow flies and winter’s passion stirs, life sometimes provides gentle reminders of vitality and purpose you thought was gone, and of functionality you are convinced is perhaps now, ill-defined.  

sometimes life does that. 

sometimes though, it turns just another ski into the best ski of my life.