Inside The Eye Of My Hurricane

 

I'm still here.  I'm still alive.  Just took a break from Las Aventuras for awhile. 

There's a sharper edge.  A sense of direction.  A sense of hope.  It's the final release of dead weight mentally and physically.  

My tolerance is very limited.  In some ways, I feel like a roadrunner.  Like the roadrunner, one moment I'm happy and content to look around the area. The next, I'm a deadly assassin. These are my emotions. After the election, I thought they'd go away.  They only intensified after the insurrection and that's when I snapped. Between covid and stupidity, I was done with them all. 

Hope is on the horizon and it gets better every day.  For now I keep myself physically and mentally busy with planning, projects, surveys and work. 

Over the past several months, I have been out guiding people helping them find their birds.  Sometimes I enjoy the quiet hike.  When covid lifted ever so slightly, everything came back and blew the lid off the cover.  I wasn't prepared for that scene.  Everything that was cancelled last year was back on again. And then some.  

Every month is booked with something crazy.  Fun.  But crazy.  I won't go into details.  Things will eventually calm down towards the end of the year, but for now, I am in the middle of a hurricane waiting for the winds to pick me up and throw me out into the larger world. 

Life is complicated. These last 4 years in the US have taken a toll on my health and on several relationships.  I didn't feel like writing for many months.  I was going through some sort of stupid depression. 

In a trek to Texas back in February, we went to find several birds along the border. We added several new lifers like the Crimson-collared Grosbeak at Resaca De La Palma State Park, the Long-billed Thrasher, Audubon's Oriole and White-tailed Hawk. 

It was fun revisiting other species as well like the above Common Pauraque and below, the Green Jay.

We even had a fun adventure in Brownsville searching for a rare Golden-crowned Warbler(below) inside a zoo.  What a trek!  

It was fun to get out of town with a friend searching for new birds.  We both were vaccinated but it didn't feel safe to fly.  So I drove the USS Betty White.  

We stayed in McAllen and visited places like Estero Llano, the Brownsville Zoo, South Padre Island and Bentsen State Park. 

Our searches happened after the big freeze in Texas.  Normally the tropically humid and lush Estero Llano was cold and barren as seen in the picture below. 

This was a small taste of what is yet to come. The adventures are big and the world life list will hopefully grow again as I travel the world on several big bird missions for this year. I got a lot of emails from you all wondering where I was.  I'm here, just took a break. Thank you for following Las Aventuras and caring!

Until next time.....