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.He turned from the window again.“They have to grow up fast,” he said.“Be ready for…migration.”She picked up a paper weight from the edge of the desk, then set it down again.“What do the adult birds—the mothers—do after the chicks are grown?” she asked.“Do they stay with them or what?”His forehead wrinkled as he pondered the question.“They go on…being birds.” He shrugged.“That’s all.”She nodded, the skin on the back of her neck tingling as the idea took hold.Was she like the Killdeer? Could she go on being Karen? Did that mean staying the same, or trying something different?She’d never thought much about her future—what life would be like when the boys were grown, and beyond that even, to when she could retire from the landscaping business.Maybe she hadn’t wanted to think about a time that seemed so scary.She’d spent her whole life being busy, catering to those around her.What would she do with herself when they no longer needed her?“Dad, can I ask you a question?”He looked at her, waiting.“Why birding? What about it made it worth leaving your family, traveling all over the world and enduring so many hardships?” She looked at the awards arrayed on his wall.Surely he hadn’t devoted so much of his life to acquiring these pieces of paper.She looked back at him.“I’ve read all the articles written about you in birding magazines, about how you’ve walked across deserts and stood in the cold for hours and gotten up in the middle of the night—all to see birds.Why would anyone do that?”He frowned, the lines on his forehead deepening.He opened his mouth, then closed it again, and moved to the computer and began typing.She came to stand beside him, and watched the words form on the screen.I don’t know how to explain.“Try.I want to understand.”When you’ve waited all night and endured the heat or cold, and finally you see the bird you’ve been seeking—the feeling is so beautiful, so sweet….You know then that you’ve done the right thing.The thing your soul needs you to do.She blinked, and read the words on the screen again, letting them soak in.The thing your soul needs you to do.What did her soul need her to do? Was this restlessness she felt of late a sign that she needed to make changes in her life—find a new job? Travel to another country? Leave Tom and start over with someone else? Or by herself?She hugged her arms across her chest, as if she could ward off the psychic chill that swept through her.She didn’t know if she was as strong as her father, who endured great hard ships in hopes of some elusive reward.She didn’t think she was as brave as Mary Elisabeth, willing to uproot herself and move across the country for the sake of trying something different.And she wasn’t as carefree as Casey, who trusted the future to take care of itself.That brought her back to the mother Killdeer, and the idea of being Karen.Who was this mysterious woman, and how could she discover her? How could she find the thing her soul needed her to do?16If life is, as some hold it to be, a vast melancholy ocean over which ships more or less sorrow-laden continually pass, yet there lie here and there upon it isles of consolation on to which we may step out and for a time for get the winds and waves.One of these we may call Bird-is le—the is land of watching and being entertained by the habits and humours of birds.—Edmund Selous, Bird WatchingThe storm hit while they were eating supper, rain sounding like gravel against the windows, the tops of the pine trees bent like heavy stalks of wheat in the on slaught.Before he went to bed that night, Martin persuaded Casey to help him position the spotting scope.“Tomorrow…we’ll see what blew in on the wind,” he explained.He hadn’t much hope of adding to his list, but he might be able to point out something interesting for Karen or Casey to add to their lists.He also had the boy open the window a couple of inches.He lay in bed later with the lights out, breathing in the green smell of wet pine and fertile loam.It reminded him a little of the jungles of Brazil, which smelled of wet and growing things, and the pungent richness of decay.He fell asleep to the drum of rain cascading off the eaves, which became the steady cadence of dew dripping from the leaves of rubber trees.A familiar cry assailed him, and the Brown-chested Barbet flitted into view.It landed on a branch above his head and cocked one eye at him, as if to pose a question or a challenge
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