You Verklempt me.

More from the New River Birding and Nature Festival!!!

Remember the last scene in Jerry McGuire?

"You.....complete....me."

If you don't remember it, just think back to before Tom Cruise went bat-shit crazy permanently.

Well, it's a good segue into my post tonight.

Muddlety Magic:
So, Saturday of the festival was Muddlety, my absolute favorite trip of all.  For a refresher on my first day at Muddlety back in 2009, go here.  Seriously.  Go read that post.  You'll understand the title of this post better.




This time around, we got Julie as our guide (plus Rudy, who comes up in a later post) and Geoff Heeter. Click here for an interview with Geoff.

The weather was fantastic.  The group was fantastic.  The guides were fantastic.  The birds were fantastic.
I guess you can see a theme here, right?
Blah blah blah.
It's hard sometimes to really convey the wonderment of this place.  It's not only birdy, it's also full of butterflies and very cool flora, and if you're lucky you might get a bear.  Bear.  BEar.  BEAr.  BEAR!!
:)


I was yet again verklempt.  Choked with emotion, holding back tears all day.  This special place just rips me apart on the inside, and as it goes through me, sews me up again into something new.
I warned Beth R. that I would be a mess, and she warned me that she would be a mess.
And she gave the quote of the day:  "YOU VERKLEMPT ME."



Let's run through some photos.  And you may notice a lack of bird photos.  Well, I'm still working on my new camera.  There are too many settings.  And the camera has a higher IQ than I do.




We couldn't have asked for a better day.



Geoff Heeter, our host with the most.
(This is his Serious Birder face.  I was so shocked to see him actually being serious, I had to get a photo of it)



Rudy, who is nearly 7 feet tall, avoids Warbler Neck all together by just laying down....



Nina, down alongside the road, as usual.  :)



Beth G., with a big bus and a big lens.



I like lichen.




Can't remember which Azure this is....





Beth Russell has spent five years trying to get a look at a Cerulean Warbler.  Here, Julie is trying to call one in....
And finally, down the road.....we got it.

When we got back on the bus, I made Beth do the Life Bird Wiggle, which she did...with some extra "White Girl From Philly" Flare:






We flushed a turkey from her nest along a hill side, so Doug and Julie hopped up the rocks to take photos of the thirteen eggs, well hidden in the brush.




Where lunch is served.




British Soldier Lichen (and a bit of deer fur stuck to it)



Everyone jumped out of the bus to take photos of this...a pile of coyote scat covered in butterflies.
If you don't know about why butterflies do this...the males need certain minerals to complete their reproduction cycles, and this is why you will find hordes of them at puddles of mud and piles of poop.


Slow motion video of the butterflies getting their tasty on:



The largest Tulip Popular tree in West Virginia:

Geoff loves this tree.



Laura loves this tree.



I love this tree.
We all love this tree.

I love this place.

How Susan Got Her Groove Back

When Real Life gets in my way, the best escape for me is Outside.

An hour at Lake Isabella did wonders for my mood.


I feel like the only person in the world when I am there.


The sycamores stretched upwards into a perfectly clear sky. I felt the cobwebs in my mind blow away.



A million sparkles in the Little Miami dazzled me and brought tears to my eyes.
(Verklempt)



I couldn't decide if I wanted to be out in the open or dappled in random beams.




Two scolding robins alerted me to one sweet baby, knobby head quivering on a wobbly neck, like a perfect yellow blossom nodding on its stem.

I tried to capture my glowing mood with a self-portrait, something I never do.

Not even close.

When in doubt, go to the woods. And remember:

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009. The best day I have spent outdoors. Ever.

Verklempt:
- choked with emotion
(German verklemmt = emotionally inhibited in a convulsive way)

Yep. That was me.

Wednesday, April 29th dawned with rain. And a little more rain. And then it rained

(I'm not one to greet the sun with any sort of joy or rapture. The last time I was happy about sunrise was when I was 20 years old and had stayed up all night to "beat the dark". Anyone ever do that? Try it once. )

Destination: Muddlety


How to describe my One Perfect Day?
It was the company I was keeping. It was the rain. It was the birds. It was the forest.
Even being stuck in the back of a van with Little Miss Freakin' Ray of Sunshine, I was happy.

This happiness, by the end of the day, had reached spiritual proportions.

Being a nature girl all of my life, I have experienced moments of rapture in the woods. There is wonder around every corner, a new life to love hidden in every tree. April 29th was unlike anything I had previously known.

Was it especially birdy? Obviously, West Virginia is one of the better-kept secrets in the bird world. My first glimpse at a Cerulean Warbler, better looks at other warblers than I have ever had....A bird in every tree. Under every bush.
Example...ovenbirds. Every-Freakin-Place we stopped.

Was the company good? People I loved, people I hardly knew. And those I hardly knew, I now count as my friends.

Was the scenery beautiful? I thought so. I fell in love, actually.
It was being "selectively logged", so every five minutes, a huge tree would splinter apart, crash and die. (while answering the "call of nature", I happily mooned the loggers for breaking the beautiful silence)

(It wasn't until I got back home and started reading other blogs, that I found out that the site of my One Perfect Day will be soon be gone. Forever. I can't talk about the rage I feel.
Not yet)


Did I find life in the leaf litter? Adult red-spotted newts,



caterpillars who thought they were fierce.

"...roarrrr...?..."


I got to know British Solider lichen.


*Update...I forgot to talk about the bear!*

Did I see a bear (that large, hairy thing that I have a phobia about)? Yes. I was standing at the back of the van by myself and saw one running across the valley, thankfully in the opposite direction. I'm told that there is a new bird out there...the Susan Bird. The vocalization and display behavior of this species is this: Both arms out and pointing, the call goes, "Bear. BEar. BEAr. BEAR!! BEAR!!!!"
(Sung softly at first, with rising panic and terror delivered at the end)
I didn't faint or die from fright. That is something to be proud of.


I watched swallowtail butterflies, freshly minted, searching for a mate and a place to leave precious eggs.

My eyes were wet most of the day. I was verklempt.

I've been trying to explain that day to everyone who will listen, but my attempts have failed. That day changed me, and I can't change back.

I can't fully express the soaring joy in my heart that day. Humbled by the mountains and the moss and the memories, I can only turn my thoughts to when I can go back.


Connection with Nature...
(Red Eft, terrestrial juvenile stage of the Red-Spotted Newt...tiny hand on my finger, huge grip on my heart)