Nature is Nurture

After Northrop I went to work for FHP, Inc. in Cerritos. I had parlayed my knowledge of Paradox (in non-geek speak it was the relational database program) into a new job. It was while at FHP that I was offered the opportunity to move my family to the Bay Area. I jumped at the chance.

I’m not going to get into the decision making process that finally led us to Pleasant Hill near Diablo Valley College. However, what is germane is my reaction the first time I crossed over from the Berkeley side to the Orinda side of the Caldecott Tunnel. Los Angeles and its suburbs hadn’t prepared me for tree lined hills and grassy meadows where deer could be seen grazing as your car zipped by at 65mph. We all fell in love.

Our apartment community was close to the creek and landscaped with liquidambers. Early one Saturday morning movement in the tree outside my bedroom window caught my eye; I watched, puzzled, as a bird appeared to scale the trunk of the tree. I can remember thinking the black and white ladder affect of its feathers was different from any bird I was familiar with when, suddenly, it stopped scaling and pecked. My whispered screams for my kids meant there soon was a dogpile on top of me. The four of us watched in amazement as the downy woodpecker scaled and pecked a bit more. After that morning Wild Birds Unlimited became our favorite hangout.

My Stokes “Beginners Guide to Birds” has seen better days but armed with it and our Bay Area Bird Guide we were soon on the trails, walking from Pleasant Hill to Hidden Lakes looking for new birds to identify.

Many years and miles later I was surprised by a call from Naval Station Great Lakes. Noel just called to say there was a northern cardinal outside of his barracks window. This late winter 2002.

From the National Wildlife Federation, Be Out There, campaign: Be Out There’s mission is to return to the nation’s children what they don’t even know they’ve lost: their connection to the natural world. Kids today spend twice as much time indoors as their parents did, missing out on the simple pleasures and lasting mental and physical health benefits of daily outdoor time.

What We Do - National Wildlife Federation