 |
 Paul Johnsgard
The next morning, Johnsgard calls to me through the bedroom
door. It’s already ten to 6. I’d set the clock radio for 5:30, but
the station it was tuned to hasn’t started its broadcast day yet. I
dress in a rush. Johnsgard has said the birds usually take off all
at once in the morning. A few cranes are already in the air; we
hear their rustling calls. We step outside into a cold, stiff wind.
That will delay the birds, Johnsgard says. They don’t like the
wind.
I walk down the lane to a spot near our viewing post from the
night before. Sandbars in the main channel right across from where
we were last night look different this morning. I swivel the
binoculars left to right. Every inch of sandbar is covered in
cranes.
Scattered cranes hop a foot or two into the air. Pop, pop, pop.
Like a pot starting to boil. They’re eager for breakfast, but after
testing the wind, most of them settle back into the group. A few
singles leave. I’m surprised they head south and southwest, into
the wind; I expected they’d let the wind carry them north of the
river.
Occasionally a single or small group flies back toward the
river, as if they’d gone out earlier and then changed their minds.
A threesome flies over, the smaller juvenile piping in front. I
hear a lot of noise from the main roost and see a few dozen birds
in the air, but most are still down.
Johnsgard swings by me on his way to another viewing spot.
“I told you they’d leave all at once, and they’re not doing
that,” he says. “It’s too cold, they don’t want to leave.”
Still, the day is moving on, and the crowd thins as birds
straggle out in twos and threes. An hour later, the sun is
beginning to highlight their pale necks, and enough have left that
in some areas I can count individual birds.
It is cold this morning. I’m grateful the wind is at my back.
Even so, and with good gloves on, my fingers are getting numb.
Johnsgard joins me.
“Had enough?” he asks.
I don’t know how to answer that.
We spend a few hours on the back roads, this time with me
driving. We stop wherever the cranes are close enough to the road
for Johnsgard to get a good shot. He’s using his longest lens, and
when he aims through my window, he has me brace my left arm on the
steering wheel so he can rest the lens on it. Some of the cranes
are hunkered down on the ground, not eating. Those that are
standing seem frisky. They hop, toss cornstalks, ruffle their wings
at each other. Johnsgard thinks he gets some good images.
I tell him that in four days of conversation, I’ve only heard
one thing from him that I don’t believe. “Just one?” he laughs. I
don’t buy that he doesn’t have another book project in mind. He
says he thinks the manuscript he just sent to his agent might need
major revision, so he’s reluctant to delve into another right away.
A minute later he admits he has been mulling over a book on
sandhill cranes. His last one, Crane Music, came out in
1991; it’s about time for a new one.
Back in Lincoln, we go to Linda Brown’s house so Johnsgard can
use her computer to download the hundreds of photos he shot while
we were out at the river. He was right, he did get some good
images. Brown is a former student, now friend and colleague. She
and Johnsgard review maps for a new Birding Trails website
underwritten by the state’s Department of Travel and Tourism.
They’re members of the committee that launched the site in 2005.
Johnsgard provided most of the text on the site. The work, the
fascination with birds, simply doesn’t end.
Earlier in the week Johnsgard told me about his heart attack.
He’d been in his lab at the time and had no idea what was
happening. He was in his 50s, lean and active, with no reason to
think pain in his chest meant “heart attack.” His graduate student
ignored his objections and called for an ambulance, which likely
saved his life. He remembers talking with the EMTs as they loaded
him up.
“They asked me, which hospital do you want to go to? I knew St.
Elizabeth had a duck pond, so I said, ‘Take me to St. Elizabeth. I
can watch the ducks.'”
Page
1
2
3
4
5
Washington State Magazine Home
|
|
by Cherie Winner
For the past 40 years, Paul Johnsgard has usually had at least
three books in the works at a given time. Some of his books are
technical surveys of groups such as owls, hummingbirds, and
stifftail ducks. Others, like Those of the Gray Wind, are
personal accounts of the landscape, history, and animals of
Nebraska.
Then there’s Dragons and Unicorns: A Natural History, a
quirky little book he wrote and illustrated with his daughter,
Karin, just before she went to college.
| |
