'This ethereal bird haunts wide-open spaces: mountain meadows, high prairies, rangeland.'
Ken Kaufman, 'Mountain Bluebird,' Birds of North America.
I don't know how many writers quote a bird manual (nor how many birding enthusiasts care much for literary pursuits) but this is the second time I've gone and done it. I'm well versed in the technical and scientific writings, bland and dry as dirt, putting to sleep even the most well intentioned grad student or research assistant, but this particular scientist, I think has a poet's soul. His birds are not dull entries on a page, but rather seem ready to fly off the paper and flit about the room; his love of the subject encourages we amateurs who otherwise might become discouraged in pursuit of such mythical beasties as the Bristle-thighed Curlew or the Pink-toed Albatross, each in its own right as fabulous and far fetched as the Chimera or Cerberus. The original namers of the various plants, animals, and even diseases were not lacking in this native poetry and still they linger in our common parlance, it is only the cold mechanics of modern science that has bereft humanity of our ignorant follies, leaving us with mere technical names as lifeless and inspiring as a dusty painting of a bird in some forgotten museum corner. The world was a more interesting place when it was flat, when legend was history and myths were real.
The Old Squaw is now the Long-tailed Sea Duck, Milk Fever is Periparturient Hypocalcemia, but happily they have yet to rechristen the Bleeding Heart. I am not saying science is a bad thing, not in the least, but it is unfortunate that we pride ourselves so on being a 'scientific' or worse, a 'technological' age, so much so that our nomenclature now reflects this cold affectation; we lose something of our humanity when we depend so much on our science or technology to define ourselves and our society, it is a step towards becoming if not a robot, at least something less than human, perhaps something akin to the more traditional view of vampires: cold, heartless monsters that exist merely for their own satiety. There is actually a movement amongst some of the elite to figure out a way to download their souls, consciousness, minds, or at least their memories into a technological medium in hopes of achieving immortality, but even if they are successful, the automaton will not be them, it will merely be a computer with their memories and they must still die, as is the lot of mortals. I think the fairies abandoned England about the same time scientific and technological advances became a dominant cultural movement and a way of living rather than mere tools to improve the lives of men. So too has our rich vocabulary been atrophying ever since.
But there are signs of hope, such as a birding manual with a little heart and human joy in it: a man who studies birds because he loves them and wants to share that love with others: real passion! It is a nice and refreshing change from what one finds on social media, where everyone is certainly passionate about something, but instead of wanting to share that love with you, they'd rather shout, insult, and impugn you into loving IT too, which is strangely ineffective. Maybe I'll just go watch some birds, plant some old fashioned flowers, or read an old book, at least they are translating Shakespeare into English...hmmm?
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