In late July, on a steep stretch of trail in Montana’s Glacier National Park, I kept getting sidetracked.
On the way to Deadwood Falls, the trail narrowed because of thick patches of berries: juicy mountain huckleberries hued indigo; delicate thimbleberries, velvety, saucer-shaped vivid pink berries with the taste of tangy raspberry; purple-black clusters of tart elderberries; and dusky serviceberries, reminiscent of blueberries, with a slight vegetal finish.
I stopped for so many berries—dropping some into the crown of my sun hat and cramming others into my mouth—that my husband quipped that the short hike would take twice as long.
I was obsessed, with the kind of intensity that I recognized in Amy Tan’s wise and witty The Backyard Bird Chronicles, which tells of how, in 2016, during a time of rising anti-Asian hate in a bitterly divisive election season, Tan began to find refuge and resilience in bird-watching. At first, she could identify 3 birds in her backyard; now she can identify 70. Through the pandemic, the wildfires, and bomb cyclones—not to mention personal losses and the tumult of politics and the world at large—Tan and the birds endured.
“Thanks to the birds, I have never felt cooped up staying at home,” Tan writes in an entry dated January 17, 2021. “So much remains new, so much can be discovered. As restricted as we are by the specter of a deadly disease, when watching birds, I feel free.”
The book’s 90 short chapters, which span five years, draw from hundreds of pages in nine journals and include gorgeous color illustrations so vivid they seem poised for flight.
Tan was 64 when she enrolled in drawing classes for the first time, and the entries reflect how she gradually gained confidence and expertise.
She draws daily, meditating on the lives of scolding crows that scream, “Try again! Don’t bring shame to our clan,” and juvenile scrub jays that have a “sneaky nonchalance.” The entries exemplify the soaring imagination and deep empathy that underpin all of her writing.
“My impulse to observe birds comes from the same one that led me to become a fiction writer,” Tan writes. “By disposition, I am an observer. I want to know why things happen.… I am drawn to see details, patterns, and aberrations that suggest a more interesting truth.”
Tan has inspired me ever since I was a teenager in the 1990s, reading her landmark debut, The Joy Luck Club, which grapples with history, assimilation, and the fraught relationship between mothers and daughters.
My scientist mother and engineer father never pressed me to follow in their footsteps, but Tan’s success provided reassurance to anyone who chose to go down a different path: What we had to say mattered.
What’s more, our obsessions mattered, to ourselves and to others who might follow after us, with their own fixations.
During the pandemic, birding skyrocketed in popularity. So, too, foraging. Both practices reflect our desire to connect with nature and to the seasons, to stay present in the moment as we minutely observe what’s before us.
In the first month of lockdown, I began foraging. With the help of a naturalist friend, the iNaturalist app, and other resources, I learned how to discern and identify plants, experiencing the kind of freedom Tan feels while birding. Going outdoors on my family’s hikes soon became a game, as I identified—and ate—miner’s lettuce, wild plums, and other finds in the hills east of Berkeley.
For Tan, each field trip is an opportunity to follow her curiosity: “Questions that beget more questions are the fertile spores that can lead you deeper into the forest.”
The questions that I followed led me to local ecology, food systems, and Indigenous knowledge, and eventually, I became a certified California naturalist. As an autodidact, I felt my knowledge was patchy and incomplete, and I wanted to gain a broader understanding through this training. With foraging, I’ve learned to accept and embrace what’s beyond my control and, in doing so, how to discern and savor unexpected gifts that come my way.
Of course, all obsessions come with their risks and rewards.
At Glacier National Park, every patch of berries called to me, but I had to keep an eye—and ear—out for grizzlies. Up to half their diet consists of huckleberries as they fatten up for hibernation during this time of year. With each one about the size of a pea, you can imagine how many berries it might take to sate the hunger of these majestic creatures!
My twin sons, on the cusp of 14, chided me for hiking so slowly.
“This is important. You might need to know how,” my husband joked. In case they got lost in the woods or in case society collapsed.
My sons may not become hardcore foragers, but I hope that the example set by me, by writers like Tan, teaches them the power of following their own obsessions, too.•
Join us on Thursday, September 18, at 5 p.m. Pacific time, when Tan will sit down with CBC host John Freeman and special guest John Muir Laws to discuss The Backyard Bird Chronicles. Register for the Zoom conversation here.
