Waiting

"I stay my haste, I make delays, 

For what avails this eager pace? 

I stand amid the eternal ways, 

And what is mine shall know my face. "

From "Waiting" by John Burroughs

On our way

Packed and ready. On our way to Yorktown and the beginning of the 2013 TransAm adventure. It's nearly 3 years to the day since I left Yorktown on my bike. 

Our route to the coast closely follows the bike route, not surprisingly given the terrain of Virginia. Afton Mountain is even challenging in a vehicle. 

I've gotten word that cyclists are descending on the Duke of York hotel already - this is happening I guess!  

It's that time of the year again

Searching sandbars on the Missouri River in South Dakota

I am always taken a little by surprise this time of year.  Typically, Blacksburg's worst weather is just before Winter loosens its grips on southwest Virginia, breathing life into the saying "it's always darkest before the dawn."  This year, was no different, except we had to pry Jack Frost's fingers free, leaving me unsatisfactorily prepared to meet the spring and all that comes with it.  Since I head out to South Dakota each year around the first of April, relapsing late winter is a common occurrence–just as I acclimate to shorts and sandals, I pack parkas and knit-caps.

This year marks the 9th year of our demography study of Piping Plovers on the river.  Through droughts, 100-year floods, and droughts again, we have intensively monitored the responses of piping plovers, least terns, snowy plovers, and assorted other shorebirds to the myriad of natural, and some wholly unnatural, variations in the Missouri River.  (If you are particularly interested in the VT Shorebird Project, here's a link with more information: http://fishwild.vt.edu/vtshorebirds/index.html).  My springs are filled with the characteristic 'peep-lo' of piping plovers, and I am reminded of the comforting feeling that the birds are as good at keeping the date as any calendar printed.

Nuray releases a plover on Hilton Head Island, SC

Although I am involved with other species and projects, the plovers dominate my time and attention.  They are certainly charismatic little characters, but following the migratory pattern of a anxious little bird has both advantages and disadvantages.  The birds migrate for survival, to secure a safe and hospitable stretch of beach on which to endure winter. These refuges are often remote islands off the southeast Atlantic and the Gulf coasts–not bad places to be as long as the weather cooperates.

Migration isn't for the faint of heart though, either as a bird or as a person.  I've been migrating for a while now, first here for a few months, then another place for a few weeks–such is the life of a wildlife biologist, and to be frank, I can't imagine what else I'd like to do.  Perhaps you need to revel in being a little thin, that feeling of taut hunger, lean, spare, but prepared.  Build up your flight muscles, but don't carry any unnecessary weight as you fly.

The fleet at the dock in Oyster, VA

Tomorrow I leave for another week of riding with Bike the US for MS, re-enacting my 2010 debut by riding from Yorktown to Blacksburg, VA.  While I would love to stay longer, it's migration time after all.  I just left Virginia's eastern shore two days ago, across the Chesapeake Bay from Yorktown.  Might I recommend you visit if you ever have the chance.  It's remarkable how quickly the din of city life falls away as you take the bridge-tunnel (a feat of engineering worth seeing once in its own right) from the densest population center in Virginia (Virginia Beach, Norfolk, etc.) to potentially one of the least.  I'm not sure what i expected, but I was pleasantly surprised.  Granted, it helps that we were charged with collecting data on Red Knots using the Virginia barrier islands as a refueling location on their way north, which afforded us the opportunity to survey the largely deserted islands. For more info on the knots, click here.  The knots gather en masse here and elsewhere, having to thread the needle of arriving in the Arctic on time to breed.  And it is with the knots beginning their journey north to the tundra that I head again east, to the shores of Virginia with my bicycle.  Another year, the plovers peeping, the knots gathering, and me loading a bicycle onto a car for another migration.