by Allison Kelly
When I was in my late twenties my mom gave me terrible advice.
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She said to me, "Al, I think you need to find a non-active hobby." I had trail-run 20km that day and had a soccer game the next day, and I really thought she'd lost her mind. She continued. "All your hobbies are extreme. What happens if you break your leg, what would you do to cope?" She even had a new activity for me in mind: photography. Because I am known to be quite a bad photographer, I immediately rejected her idea as nonsense. But I gotta say, the idea percolated, and a few weeks later I came back to her and said, "Mom, I've been thinking about what you said and I've decided you're right. I'm going to take up birdwatching!" She laughed because my idea of a non-active hobby was walking instead of running, but we could both sense that an accord had been made.
I bought binoculars and the Birds of Southwestern British Columbia guidebook and I went down to Maplewood Flats (a place I had run through many times). As I moved slowly through the woods I saw something I had never noticed before. A duck, and another duck, and another duck still! “Excuse me!” I exclaimed aloud. “How did I not know that we have more than one kind of duck here?!” I opened my guidebook - a Wood Duck, male, a drake.
Over the next several years this hobby took a backseat to a busy life, but I would still go out when I could. I learned how to differentiate between a song sparrow and a fox sparrow (it's the colouration and the eyebrow). And each time I went out, the birds gave me lessons in how to notice, how to move slowly, and how to be silent. And I kept running, and playing soccer, and, and, and…
After I was diagnosed and was recovering from surgery, my energy was so depleted. I stopped running. I stopped playing soccer. I stopped having a busy life altogether, really, But I became “a birder.” And the terrible advice my mother gave me all those years ago became a lifeline, a way through.
One of the first places I went after diagnosis was Maplewood Flats. A sanctuary, for birds, and for me.
Allison Kelly first came to Callanish as a retreat participant, in 2018. She can be found moving slowly along the trails of Burnaby Mountain.