"Sorry, Dad," your daughter says after a little while. "I didn’t mean to drop that on you."
"Hey," you say one more time. Each of you should have had someone else. But there are no payoffs at the should have had window.
"I really thought-" Now your daughter breaks off. What did she think? That when she grew up she wouldn’t need to go places with her father anymore? Something like that, or she would have kept going. She could have; it wouldn’t offend you. Of course people expect to do things on their own, or with a spouse, when they get into their thirties. ‘
But life isn’t what you expect. Life is what you get. And what your daughter’s got is a birding trip to Nome with her old man.
Rattling up the Kougarok road would make anybody feel old. More scattered rocks off to the left give you another excuse to stop. "Let’s see what we’ve got," you say. "Maybe we’ll spot a wheatear."
Like the bluethroat, the northern wheatear is a Eurasian bird that visits western Alaska. It’s supposed to display on rocks like those. With its dark mask, it looks a little like a shrike, but its black-and-white tail makes a terrific field mark. If you see one, you’ll recognize it.
A cloud slides across the sun as soon as you get out of the car.
The breeze blows harder, down from the north. It may be summer, but you’re only a hundred miles from the Arctic Circle. You zip up your anorak and tug on your hat to make sure it doesn’t blow away, through binoculars, the rocks scattered across the tundra seem close enough to touch. Motion on one makes you pause. But it’s not a wheatear, only another American golden plover. You sweep some more.
Your daughter is looking toward the dwarf willows edging a puddle. Her scan suddenly stops, too. "What have you got?" you ask.
"Redpoll," she answers. "Just behind that little plant with the yellow flowers. See him? He’s on one of the top branches."
"I’ve got him," you say. Redpolls are tiny birds, related to goldfinches. "Common or hoary, d’you think?"
"Common," she answers confidently. "Too dark to be a hoary." And when the bird flies off a few seconds later, it shows a striped rump. A hoary redpoll’s rump would be white.
Along with the redpolls, white-crowns chirp in the willows and scratch under them. So do a couple of golden-crowned sparrows, white-crowns’ less common cousins. You’ve seen them before, in the California hills. Your wife spotted one in the yard a few years ago, but you never have. She was so pleased, she was in remission then, too…
The sun comes out. The breeze fades. "That’s more like it," you say, and unzip the coat again.
A moment later, you wonder how smart that is. As soon as he air grows still, the mosquitoes rise up around your daughter and you. Their hateful buzzing, like so many miniaturized dentists’ drills, fills your ears. The repellent does its best. Not many land on your face or the back of your neck or your hands, the only flesh you’re showing. But they perch in battalions on your hat and your clothes.
Your daughter, who is still scanning the rocks in hope of a wheatear, makes a disgusted noise. She turns the binoculars around and blows on one of the objective lenses. "Goddamn things are everywhere," she mutters.
"Want to go back to the car?"
"Yes." She slaps at her calf. Maybe one got in under the bottom of her jeans and went up above her sock. Or maybe it bit her through the sock. You wouldn’t have thought a mosquito could, but you’ve never run into any like these before.
Your withdrawal across the tundra feels like Napoleon’s after Moscow. "Good God!" you say when you reach the rental. You open the doors and close them again as fast as you can, but you still need some time to get rid of the mosquitoes you let in. Even then, a couple hover against the rear windows. If they stay back there, you’ll let them live; going after them is more trouble than it’s worth.
You pull onto the road again. "Man," your daughter says. You nod. One of the mosquitoes from the back comes forward. She squashes it. You smile at each other.
Mileposts on the Kougarok road are white numerals, written vertically, on a traffic-sign-green background. They’re too small for plinkers to bother with. They’re also too small to be easy to spot. When you see one, though, you can read it.
Your daughter calls them out. Sometimes she misses one, but she always gets the next if she does. She’s reliable. If you say so, she’ll tell you it’s one more thing that doesn’t do anybody any good. You keep quiet, hoping she’ll know what you’re thinking.
"Mile seventy," she says at last. "Getting close."
"Uh-huh." Your hands are twinging worse now. You take the right one off the wheel and open and close it a couple of times. Then you do the same with the left. Maybe it helps a little.
"Mile seventy-one," your daughter says. Half a minute later, she points. "There!"
"I see it." A pole, taller than one of the milepost supports, stabs into the tundra. Stuck to the top of it is what looks like the outer rim of a bicycle wheel. You wonder how it got there, and why. Did birders put it up? There’s a marker like that at mile fifty-five on the Teller road, off to the west: a board in a roadside willow that points straight to the nest a pair of northern shrikes have built. This one is less precise, but it does the job.
You slow. A couple of hundred yards past the marker, a rutted track branches off the Kougarok road. It leads down into a little valley, with a creek chuckling over gravel at the bottom and with willow thickets all around.
"It’s the right habitat for bluethroats," your daughter says. "They like running water, and they like willows."
Once upon a time, people lived down here, but not lately. The planking on the house and outbuildings to the right of the stream is weathered and pale. Glassless windows stare blackly, like the eye sockets of a skull. Willows grow right up to the doorways.
You drive as far as you can-half a mile or so-till the track turns to mud as it nears the stream. If you bog down in that, you may never get out, four-wheel drive or no. You stop. The map on the counter at the rental place says the bluethroats live farther down the valley, past the buildings and past an abandoned truck you haven’t seen yet.
"Well." You open the door. "Let’s see what we’ve got."
Your daughter slides out, too. "Oh, my God!" she says.
This may be the right habitat for bluethroats. It’s the perfect habitat for mosquitoes. If a six-legged prophet preached of mosquito paradise, it would look like this. Plenty of little pools and puddles for eggs and larvae. All those willows to shelter the adults. No wind to speak of. And, now, sustenance.
The mosquitoes were bad on the open tundra. You don’t want to believe how much worse they can be. "Oh, my God!" your daughter says again. She yanks the door open and snatches out the repellent. You spray each other once more.
It helps… some. But they’re all over your clothes. And they buzz around the two of you in clouds as you walk down to the stream and then along it. You want to swat, but why bother? Would you swat a raindrop in a cloudburst?
You start to choke. Then you spit, and spit again. "Did you… inhale one?" your daughter asks.
"Not-quite." You spit one more time.
"Be careful here." She seems glad to change the subject. "Your shoes aren’t waterproof." Hers are, bought from some fancy hikers’ catalogue. You wear the old canvas-topped Adidases you always knock around in. They do let in water.
But you say, "My legs are longer than yours." The creek is only ten feet wide. Here and there, rocks and gravel stick up above the water. You cross behind her without getting wet.
The ground is a little better over there. But the willows- hardly any taller than you are-press close to the bank. The air around you is curtained with mosquitoes.
You walk on. A mosquito lands on your ear. You brush it away. A bird darts across the stream and into the willows. It’s here and gone before you can ID it. "Was it-?" you ask at the same time as your daughter says, "It could have been-"