SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019
26 BACKPACKER.COMPlay List
THE EXPERIENCE
Play List
THE EXPERIENCE
PHOTO
B
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RADIANT^
SPIRITGALLERYAN ERUPTION OF flapping breaks
the silence of a late-afternoon hike
on the Appalachian Trail outside of Hot
Springs, North Carolina. Just a few feet
down the path, a ruffed grouse takes sudden
f light, hurtling its teapot-size body skyward
in a fury of wings and feathers.
Before I can raise my binoculars, the bird
glides out of sight into a thicket of conifer
branches. But I saw where it landed. Got it, I
think. Circling a round the ba se of the tree it
f lew into, I scan the lower limbs hoping for
a better glimpse of the notoriously elusive
bird. My focus is the grouse, but I can still
hear the hikers behind me breezing by, eager
to make their miles.
Birding on the trail requires a different
set of priorities. Distance goals disappear in
exchange for a slower pace and more atten-
tion pa id to the sights a nd sounds of the for-
est—a f lash of movement in the periphery, an
unfamiliar song, a rustling in a bush. Eachhint of animal motion requires a pause, a
wait, a listen. It amounts to a walking medi-
tation on the life a ll a round you, rather tha n
just figuring out where to step.
Because birds f ly, sing, and are often
decked out in f la shy plumage, they ser ve a s
the greeters of the natural world. A hawk
soaring past an office window can rip your
focus away from the blue glow of the com-
puter screen. That’s how I got hooked. Now
I’m hopeless.
At its core, the allure of birding is equal
parts the chase and the thrill of discovery. At
lea st, that ’s what I tell myself a s I ma ke my
third lap around the tree, with not so much
as a grouse feather in sight.
The ruffed grouse isn’t particularly
threatened as a species, but that doesn’t
make one easy to find. In western North
Carolina, it prefers steep and overgrown ter-
rain, where the bird’s finely patterned feath-
ers, f lecked with reddish-brown and black,help it blend in with the lea f litter a nd tree
trunks. You could be looking right at one and
not know it.
And so I circle the tree, hoping for a clear
look to accomplish my goa l for this t wo-day
trek to Max Patch, a famous bald about half-
way through North Carolina’s 300-mile por-
tion of the AT. I don’t want to leave without
getting a better glimpse.
That ’s just the kind of mindset that ca n
put a backpacker-turned-birder behind
schedule and on the bad side of a more ambi-
tious pa r tner. In this ca se, that ’s my wife
Alice, who is equal parts curious and anx-
ious to keep moving. Still, we stumble fa r-
ther off trail, binoculars pointed skyward,
once we decide the bird has left the tree.
A n hour later, a s the la st rays of sun-
light turn golden, the grouse is nowhere to
be seen. But as we turn to leave, the air is
suddenly broken by a high-pitched, whin-
nying cry—WUK WUK WUK. A pileated
woodpecker, North America’s version of the
pterodactyl, tears through the understory,
followed closely by two squawking blue
jays. Behind us, off in the distance, we hear
the drumming of a male grouse. As another
hiker trudges by on the trail, we turn around
like a pair of hens and follow the call. Camp
can wait a bit longer.BRING THE BINOCS
Birding adds a new dimension to every hike.12 By Benjamin Graham
The majestic
ruffed grouse