It's Good To Get Out of Town

Scenic Highway 23 just as it starts heading down toward the St. Louis river.

Sandy Kimoto telling us about his big year.

This weekend I decided to get out of town.  Winter was getting so long so I chose, for some reason, to go to a forsaken bog in the middle of no where to look for birds.  Actually I do know why I chose to go.  Last spring I listened to a presentation about this box from Sparky Stensaas.  The Sax-Zim Bog (isn't that a scrabbilicious word?), he said, is a magical environment.  Sparky is a naturalist and a photographer.  He showed us a video he had made and put to music and I fell in love with the place.  That is why I came.  I got there and was registered by some very friendly people from the town of Meadowlands.  We each got a little cloth bag, a name tag on a Sax Zim Bog lanyard, and a Sax Zim bog window scraper. The scraper was to use on the school buses we would be riding this weekend.  We had a lovely dinner of pasty pie, green beans, cole slaw, rye bread and cake.  They had vegie lasagne for the vegetarians.  After dinner we listened to Sandy Kimoto speak.  Sandy Kimoto still holds the world record for seeing the most birds on the North American continent in a single year.  He saw 746 birds I think.  If you saw the movie "The Big Year,"  he was played by Owen Wilson.  Sandy loves birds and is an engaging speaker.  He is one of those humble people who doesn't always know when he is going to be funny.  His sincerity is genuine. I enjoyed the talk but I was one of the first ones out of the Meadowlands Community Center.  I knew I had to be up at 5 a.m. to catch my bird tour school bus in the morning.