Heckled By ParrotsBlue Sky WritingRebecca K. O'Connor

Five on Falconry

April 26, 2011 – 7:09 am

Tulelake NWR

The sun rises at 6:15 right now. I woke up at 5:30 and thought to myself that if I had the wherewithal to get out of bed, I could be in the field just in time to fly a falcon.

Except that it’s April and the falcons are moulting.

So I did the other thing I do early in the morning sometimes, went to work on my morning pages after grabbing a cup of coffee. I wouldn’t say this is where I get my best ideas, but it’s definitely where I get my strangest inspiration. Three pages of long-hand in a hardcover, lined and blank book equals deciphering crazy dreams, bitching about everything worth bitching about (but mostly at myself) and occasionally a spark of (what I think) is a great idea.

This morning I was lamenting the moult in my pages (because seriously– it looks so much nicer out there than it did in January). And I was also thinking about what my “marketing plan” should be for releasing myeBook, RISE on July 1st. I have a great book trailer that just needs a few edits. (Amazing music by Rob Diebold and guest narration by my suspicious by surprisingly professional-sounding next door neighbor). We’re just a couple weeks away from that… And I have a few other ideas, but I got to thinking this morning about how sick of my own story I was.

RISE COVER

Coming July 1, 2011

What I really wanted when I wrote LIFT and what I would like to continue with RISE is to tell the story of a modern life molded by falconry. Unfortunately, I only have my own lens to tell it through. That’s when the spark came.

Wouldn’t it be great to interview other falconers on the blog?

Not a bunch of “famous” falconers mind you, but a cross section of us. I would love to wile away the moult experiencing falconry through everyone else. I would love to show that falconers are a cosmopolitan mix who make their living in a variety of ways and who all share the same passion and life-shaping force of this sport. I want people to know that we are generous, funny, a lovely combination of strange and smart and that what we all have in common is that no matter what is happening on the ground… we keep looking up.

So here’s what I’m going to do about that. I’m going to start harrassing falconers. (A few of you probably suspect your in the line of fire.) If I get green-lit, I’m going to ask you five questions. They will be specific to you. And I’m going to try to find out enough about you (if I don’t already know you) to ask good questions. (I Heart Google.) They will be meant to shed light on our sport, it’s joys, beauties, challenges, ironies and necessary humor. You can answer them in an email, over the phone or on Skype. Nothing will get published without your permission. I’ll just ask for your thoughts and a photo of you or a falconry bird or you with a falconry bird.

I’m taking suggestions. I want people across the country, across continents and a 50/50 split of men and women. So come on! Volunteer an unsuspecting victim. Volunteer yourself.

I can’t wait. There is so much I want to know about you! And I would love to tell your story. May I?

Contact me here.

By rebecca •• Posted in Falconry, Feathered Thinking, Five on Falconry •• Comments (2)

A Novel Story

March 31, 2011 – 6:48 am

Beginnings...

It was 2001 and I had just turned 30, announcing to all that THIS was the year I was going to finally not just write, but finish my first novel.

I had written a handful of short stories, started and stopped two other novels and had a dusty diploma for a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing above my desk. Now, at last, I was determined and not just to write this one book, but to write for a living. I had a ten year plan. By the time I was forty I would be a bestseller!

First though, the novel. I gave myself permission to write something fun, something not meant to change me or the world, just a good story with a beginning, middle and end. So I decided to write a romance. I found a publishing company, Avalon Books that published sweet romances and had a long reputable history selling their books to libraries. I wrote an outline and then three chapters and a synopsis and I sent it to them.

I didn’t think they would ask for the manuscript. I also didn’t think that they would buy the finished book. All the same, I received a letter requesting the rest of the manuscript.  If it wasn’t for that bit of encouragement, I doubt there would have been a novel.

It was not a good summer and fall to be writing a book. I was working as a bird trainer and managing my first new free-flight bird show as supervisor. It was in Toledo, Ohio where the summer was somehow an even thicker, more suffocating blanket of wet heat than my Florida homebase. Before we left for the summer, my boyfriend had broken up with my answering machine and stopped taking my calls. Then all the birdshow staff moved into the same house and we were immediately at odds with each other. No one thought I should be supervisor. And I fought them when I should have been bending.

And in the heat and the strife, it seemed we lost and tracked birds constantly. We found them in residential neighborhoods, in the next county over and once in the cheetah enclosure – where the quick cat came damn close to having a gourmet snack. We tied a falcon too close to an eagle owl in the weathering yard, my favorite falcon, and she was killed. The king vulture almost got me by the throat and the crow that I raised and trained from a chick literally went mad.

I wasn’t well either. I woke most nights with a pain so intense rippling through my right side that my housemates would find me pacing the halls and quietly crying. We passed each other like ghosts. We were all too exhausted from working 12 hour days, 6 days a week, from faking smiles on stage and calling out for lost birds to explain our pain, let alone express empathy. I cannot think of a time in my life that I felt more broken.

And yet, I built a plywood desk to have a place to write and I wrote. I wrote at night. I wrote on my one day off. I wrote one page at a time. I wrote while the sounds of the zoo across the street whispered through the house, trying to drag me away from Marshall and Brooke falling in love, falling apart and falling back together. Still, I wrote. I had surgery to have my gallbladder removed. The Twin Towers fell a few days later. And I kept writing. I wrote until I was done.

Falcon's Return

Falcon’s Return is not a great book, but it’s not a bad one. Avalon published it.

I’m forty now. And I’m not a bestseller, but I’ve written 11 books. Lift is the one I’m most proud of, but none has a back-story quite like Falcon’s Return. There are a  hundred stories in the writing of a book; hobbled together they make up the story of an author’s life, or rather, the changing of an author’s life.

And I have made a thousand choices that have been spun into good luck because ten years ago I sat at a plywood desk across the street from a zoo all throughout an oppressive summer —-and I wrote. It would be nice to be a best-selling author, but it would be nice to win the lottery too. No one can force such splashy swathes of good fortune. But you can show up at the page – write, compose, create. You can change your life one page at a time just by showing up and trying. I think in the end you’ll find your nostalgia is for the journey, not the successes –and that the journey was utterly worth the work.  

Happy Anniversary Falcon’s Return! I’m grateful that you’re mine.

By rebecca •• Posted in Feathered Thinking •• Comments (4)

Monday Morning Falconry Fix

March 28, 2011 – 4:06 am
India on a jackrabbit

India on a jackrabbit

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Monday Morning Falconry Fix

March 21, 2011 – 4:53 am
Anza Borrego, Merlin

Anza Borrego, Merlin

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Monday Morning Falconry Fix

March 14, 2011 – 4:46 am

Sister about to Fly at Sunset

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About a Dog

March 8, 2011 – 9:20 pm
Booth (photo by Rob Diebold)

Booth (photo by Rob Diebold)

I went most of my adult life without a dog. And my first dog broke my heart in the crippling way that only first love can.

This embarrassed me deeply because I wasn’t a little girl anymore and a dog may be a friend, but she is not a person. She shouldn’t be able to twist your insides that way a loss of a lover could.

Yet when she died she left me bereft all the same and I didn’t want to love another dog again.

Not like that, anyway. Not ever again.

Booth, my “rescued” Brittany, the foster dog I kept, has been with me for four seasons now. He is horribly gun shy, doesn’t have a nose to speak of, but he flushes ducks for the falcon as if his whole world depended upon an empty pond. Mostly this is impressive and a relief to someone who on many occasions has swam for the sake of her falcon. This season though, it reminded me to have care. A good dog will kill itself to do its job, to please the person he wants to please most.

I put Booth in a massive pond with a nearly all-encompassing impenetrable perimeter of brambles. Booth had flushed a thousand ducks, the early-season lackadaisical falcon was back on my glove and the dog was still swimming. Booth was not in condition, yet had swum a marathon and there was no easy way out of the water. He was trying to get back to me, but his enthusiastic barks became whines of distress and he started to go under.

There was no question in my mind what I should do. I didn’t think about it. I tied the falcon to my vest and left it and him at the edge of the water. I plunged in and pulled my flagging dog up for air and to the shore. I had a hard time getting us out, but I did it.

Photo by Rob Diebold

Photo by Rob Diebold

I don’t believe in dog as savior. I don’t believe that dogs are angels or gods. I do believe though, that there are bits of myself I refused to believe in, let alone accept and that a good dog is the embodiment of those pieces of me.

Dogs trust and adore and move forward with a faith in human beings that is, well, foolish. Dogs believe in a world worth pouring your heart into no matter the cost. They make me think of Kipling’s poem “If” and those lines I’ve always thought I would never be capable of myself, If you can force your heat and nerve and sinew/ To serve you long after they are gone./ And so hold on when there is nothing in you/ Except the will that says to them: ‘Hold on!’

The falcon hunts for the falcon. He is my responsibility. But the dog, well the dog does things for our sake. It makes me believe that as people – because it was people who bred dogs for this trait—perhaps we do in fact do crazy things, straight from the heart, for one another. Maybe I am just as capable of being as amazing as my dog. Maybe so are other people.

It’s too late. I love Booth as much as I ever loved my first dog, Jolie. And maybe this is exactly what I needed.

By rebecca •• Posted in Falconry •• Comments (11)

Monday Morning Falconry Fix

March 7, 2011 – 4:35 am
Photo by Jason Boson

Photo by Jason Boson

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A (New) Tradition of Scallops

March 6, 2011 – 3:50 pm
Nantucket Bay Scallops

Nantucket Bay Scallops

Last year, a falconry friend who I met on Facebook Fed-Exed me a box of Nantucket Bay Scallops fresh off the boat. I cooked them, shared them and made them into a kitchen story. I have thought about them all year. So as the end of the falconry season approached and I knew it was about time for the scallop harvest, I found myself wondering where I could get them again this year and daydreaming about what I could make with them.

When Mark offered to send me another batch I was beside myself. If you love seafood, there is really nothing comparable to very very fresh Nantucket Bay Scallops. Nothing.

They showed up at my office in DU and I immediately opened the box and shared. My coworkers, some being hunters, others foragers and gardeners knew without me explaining the value of sourced food, both in taste and in the pleasure of knowing the path your food took to find you. We all nibbled on raw scallops out of the box. Then I had one quickly seared batch at home.

Scallop Pizza

Scallop Pizza

The next round of scallops topped a pizza with white sauce, mushrooms, goat cheese and caramelized onions. I cooked it with a friend and was reminded how relationships are sometimes mixed and measured and slowly perfected in the kitchen.

Scallop Quiche

Then I took some next door where they were making brunch the next morning for friends and neighbors.  Part of our brunch was my neighbor’s recipe, scallop and onion quiche which coupled with a mimosa was just about heaven. We told stories, laughed and further sealed the bond of our small, wry but fierce neighborhood watch.

Leek, Potato, Cauliflower Soup with Scallops

Leek, Potato, Cauliflower Soup with Scallops

The last incarnation of my scallops was eaten on a cold drizzly day. I threw together a cheesy leek, potato and cauliflower soup, in the last few minutes of cooking throwing in scallops. It was hearty and soul-warming and I was sad to eat the last bite, yet could hardly stop myself. I ate it alone, already nostaglic for scallops past, but grateful for how far this year’s batch of scallops had gone –in so many ways.

This is what food means to me. Food is the hard work of someone to harvest, the heart of someone to prepare it and the friendships that are built around sharing the pleasure and gift of a perfect meal. So thank you, Mark. What you have sent me these last two years is so SO much more than a bit of tasty seafood. Cheers!

By rebecca •• Posted in Uncategorized •• Comments (0)

Monday Morning Falconry Fix

February 28, 2011 – 9:46 am
Peregrine falcon - Samish Flats -00044 (2)

Photo by Gregg Thompson taken in Samish Flats

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The Death of North American Wetlands Conservation Act Grants?

February 21, 2011 – 5:14 pm
View at the Office (Napa Plant Site)
View at the Office (Napa Plant Site)

Current suggested budget cuts on Capitol Hill would eliminate funding for the North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) bringing annual funding ($46 million in 2010) to ZERO.
 

 I’ll preface here… the budget needs to be cut. We are spending too much money and not enough taxes are coming in to cover our voracious need to get to the next better place. We will always need balance. There will always be a sweetheart with whom you will need to spend less time or have to leave out in the rain. And there is much to scream about being cut from the budget right now, but humor me for a moment. Let me tell you why my pet project should be protected.

The North American Wetlands Act was created to save the wet and wild spaces in America. Wet and Wild. This sounds sexy and it is. Fish need water. Ducks need water. And our children need the water which is filtered through the wetlands– the kidneys of our renewable resources. The best drinking water is utilized, muliplied and sifted through a place so perfect and pristine that you’ll need waders to even get a brief glimpse of its secrets.

And your children are welcome to the drinking water. I simply want to be in waders, waist-deep in paradise. Wetlands are both our health and our leisure. Either way, no organism lives without kidneys. It’s impossible. Yet we’ve lost 96% of our historic wetlands in California. We’re drinking the dregs of what was once a spectacular vintage.

Since the conception of the North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) in 1989 more than 1,600 NAWCA projects have contributed to the conservation of more than 25 million acres of habitat across North America. That’s about the size of Virginia or Kentucky. If all you know is California (like me) — there are 101 million acres in California. NAWCA has been responsible for the conservation of a piece of land about a quarter of the size of this state. This is a lot of something when you’re in a place where you basically have nothing …

There is more to NAWCA than this though. When I stepped into a position at Ducks Unlimited fundraising, I knew I was with the right organization. I knew what DU did for wetlands and waterfowl and that they had been consistently science-based and successful in their work since 1937. What I had no idea of –and what constantly amazes me is what a complex partnership of careful orchestration the renewal and protection of wetlands actually requires. NAWCA isn’t just a chunk of change being doled out by the government. It is the granting arm of the Joint Ventures, cohorts of conservation groups organized geographically and all following an agreed upon plan for rejuventating wetlands systems that can support the most diverse group of species possible, including humans. If you want funds to do wetlands work from NAWCA, you better be making the most positive impact possible or you don’t make the cut.

Conaway Ranch

Conaway Ranch

Speaking to this as a fundraiser, there’s another component to this that makes for incredible forward motion. Every federal dollar MUST BE MATCHED by at least one private dollar in donations. One dollar of NAWCA money may mean $8 for me in funding work on the ground. Who wouldn’t find it more appealing to give if giving means your dollar is stretched and incredibly valuable. Not to mention how very expensive it is to do dirt work in California…

Which also leads me to this point… NAWCA means jobs. This flow of philanthropic dollars helps contribute billions of dollars to the U.S. economy and support more than 20,000 jobs. And I don’t mean just here at DU. We are a group of scientists, biologists, engineers and GIS specialists with only mimimal adminstration support. When we do construction, it’s contracted out. Hiring equipment, moving dirt, doing the on-the-ground work is handed over to the local economy from those dollars. DU runs a lean operation of specialists. We don’t own equipment or have construction staff in-house. We do the permiting, engineering, check the science and catalyze. Money invested here is money invested locally.

And all of this sounds very analtyical, thought-provoking and relevant. It’s true of course, the important things that NAWCA makes possible. If you were to corner me though, I would say that I’ve lost too much already, that every piece of California that has its wilderness cracked or smashed by concrete is one more blow to my already mostly-broken heart. We are supporting 12% of historical duck numbers on a mere 4% of historical habitat. Something is going to give. Don’t let it be NAWCA. You need wetlands and ducks need you.

Read more here and see how you can make your opinion heard.

In Wilton (photo by Rob Diebold)

In Wilton (photo by Rob Diebold)

By rebecca •• Posted in Conservation, Delta, Ducks Unlimited, Falconry, Grasslands, San Francisco Bay, Tulare Basin, Valley •• Comments (0)