Purple Martin Migration Venture

​Heather here, I want to apologize for the big gap between the first post and this post. I’ll be up front that  we took this kayak outing on August 9th and Andie had her part written up a long while ago and I’m the one that was the hold up. In fact she already has the next post done as well, did I mention she’s the writer and I’m not? I’m going to try and be better about getting my part done in a more timely manner for you all. 

Andie:

Heather and I have a lot of things in common, but it didn’t necessarily seem that way at first. We are photo negatives of each other in so many ways. I remember talking to my therapist at the time we met and she asked me what Heather and I had in common. I blinked for a second and said, I believe, “We both like hockey.”

I think maybe we were more different at first and grew together, but in some very important core ways we are much the same, but express it differently. For Heather, nature is an adventure. She likes to camp and kayak and do scary trail stuff with her Jeep. I enjoy those things too, but for me, nature is worship. Nature is the greatest masterpiece of the greatest Artist of all time and it humbles me and terrifies me as much as it thrills me and inspires me. I like to say I feel closest  to God in the mountains and that’s a good picture of what the healthy sense of “the fear of God” really is. The mountains could hold your bones so gently in the earth as you rest for eternity or they could crush you where you stand. We’re moved by both beauty and grandeur.

My point is that even when Heather and I love the same thing, we love it differently and that works because of an absolute metric ton of communication. One way we’re very different is in our levels of patience. Heather is one of the most patient people I have ever known. I have become much more slow to wrath than I was even a year ago, but for Heather, it’s natural. It’s her instinct even when it’s hard. For me, every moment of patience has been fought for at times when it’s been less easy.

Case in point: We had an interesting couple nights this week. On Monday we went kayaking. But this was no normal kayak trip, no. This was the migration of the purple martins, and there were quite a few things going on that night.

For one thing, I was in a bit of pain. I had fallen a couple weekends ago and bruised my tailbone, which was finally healing to the point we thought I might be able to handle an hour and a half on my butt to go see these migrating birds. Well, I was less sure. But I was willing to give it a shot. The one thing about being autistic and healing from trauma with someone like my wife is, I’m never stuck anywhere. I can always say no. We can always stop. We can always leave. So I’m willing to try a lot of things I’m unsure about upfront and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Monday was more of the latter.

We also had a couple extra people with us, thankfully, because I wasn’t quite in the shape to be hauling things and such.  Still, I felt better than I’d felt since I’d fallen and was doing pretty good that day. Fortunately, I was very prepared and quite on time for the trip, which is a feat for me. Unfortunately, the one thing I had forgotten was more pain meds. (Tylenol/Advil cocktail, nothing crazy) But the time I remembered, we had already picked up Heather’s sister and her friend when I realized this and so I decided to go with it and see how it went. 

Another thing going on was that I just switched from a kayak to a paddle board for the first time, and it was an inflatable paddle board to boot. We’d put everything together when we got it out of the box, but we had never put one in the water before. We were relatively sure we knew what we were doing (I’m pretty sure Heather knew what she was doing), and we had all the reasonable safety measures in place. Maybe my first time on a paddle board, but not our first time on the water. Heather had just sold my kayak and got a paddle board for me because I wanted to be more in the water than even a sit-on kayak afforded me and wanted it to be easier to get in and out of my vessel (I don’t think you can actually call a paddle board a vessel) from out in the water.

We blew it up, not entirely correctly I might add. I kept my life vest on the entire time, mostly because I was afraid of losing my balance and toppling in, even though I would be sitting on the board with a kayak paddle and not at all attempting to stand at this point. Life vest stayed on. Didn’t want to fight the water and potential pain at the same time if I ended up in the lake.

So it started pretty ok. Well, let me say this, I tire rather easy for reasons that either my doctors don’t care about or are mystified by. I also am in pain almost all the time. I’ve rejected a lot of the medical options I’ve been presented with due to dangerous side effects or risk of dependency. I’ve seen this very thing kill good people with pills in more than one way and I’d rather be in pain. That being said, it changes the way I interact with life. I often have to do things more slowly. I generally prefer to wander than to arrive. Things that people take for granted are harder for me. That’s part of the deal. So, all that being said, getting across the lake and keeping up with the others was a bit of a challenge. Not outside of my window of tolerance, but certainly a challenge. 

The beauty of the place wasn’t lost on me, though. We were there just about sunset and the middle of this lake is a circle of lily pads and flowers and grasses. The perimeter of this little island is marked off by buoys so you can’t get too close. And the magic of it is that every year all these teeny tiny little swallows come into this island while they migrate through the area.  Heather says we get a lot of migrating birds, they stop here in our lakes for a rest on their journey. We were out there at sunset with all these strangers in kayaks laughing and sharing glow sticks and stories and hundreds of these tiny purple birds are swooping all around and it’s so beautiful. I got to a spot in the lily pads (outside the perimeter) where I could stop and my paddleboard would stay put and did exactly what I came there to do: I pulled out a sweater I was working on and began to crochet.

See, I don’t know what it is but crochet is what I do. Adventures to me are interesting places to crochet. Because when you crochet as constantly as I do, you start to want to get off the couch and take your yarn to other places. I crochet as a passenger in the Jeep to anywhere further than just in town. That includes off-roading, and on the highway with the top and doors off. (Omg my yarn tension XD) I also sometimes crochet under the tree at the park in town, at the picnic table near the local reservoir, countless campfires, and yes, kayaking/paddleboarding. It washes. The lake ain’t gonna hurt it none. (Just keep yarn out of the lake! Be smart about being out on the water!) I took mine in my dry bag and I pulled it out on the board and sat there in sweater heaven as the sun set over the lake and the birds came in. Now that’s a good place to crochet! I sometimes think in awe that God does that every night all around the world and never paints the same sky twice and I’m just blown away by that kind of abundance of creative inspiration. Oh yeah, crochet is also worship. (Hint: It’s all worship) So, yeah, I was happy.

The pain didn’t hit all at once, thankfully, but after some time had passed in relative peace and quiet, I realized quickly that I was approaching what I could handle out there on the lake so I paddled over and talked to Heather. She suggested I head back to shore if I felt comfortable doing so and they’d join me after last light. There was still plenty of light to get back to shore, even at my pace, I was still in my life vest, phone attached to my board and accessible in case of emergency. And I knew I needed to get off the lake. So I said yes, I’d go and wait for them. What neither of us thought about at the time was me getting the keys for the Jeep. That and the propensity for the jeep alarm to go off even if the doors are unlocked. We’d remember that later.

I paddled steadily back to shore and was doing pretty ok until I got about 30 feet from shore. I had two muscle spasms I was afraid would knock me off my board (thus the life vest) but I kept my balance fine both times. The real pain hit when I stood up. The moment I pushed up off the board, it felt like someone’s steel toed boot had connected with my spine and it almost toppled me. I kept my balance, got my board out of the water, and I had only two thoughts: dry clothes and getting off my feet. 

The inflatable paddle board was light enough for me to haul back to the trailer on my own, which was the main reason I had wanted an inflatable one. I needed something that I could manage no matter what shape I was in. By the time I got up the hill to the Jeep, I had hit my pain threshold and I was done. Often the pain creeps in and I get a little warning and then waves of it start crash in all at once and that’s what was happening that night. I dropped my board and gear into the trailer, opened the valve to deflate, and opened the passenger door to get my bag of dry clothes — that’s right, only to set off the car alarm.

At this point I had hit my wall and I burst into tears. 

There were a lot of people there that night because of the purple Martin migration. There were definitely a lot of people looking at me standing there crying with my phone in my hand and the car alarm ruining everyone’s peaceful night. I called Heather, and she’s patient, but no one’s perfect. I do think she was frustrated with me at that point, but she started back. There was nothing I could do but wait. I hate waiting. I hate people looking at me. One guy asked if I was ok. What do you even say? No, I can’t turn off the alarm. Yes, I’m actually fine. Just got overwhelmed. No emergencies. 

I was in pain and I was wet and I didn’t know what to do. After maybe a couple minutes, the alarm stopped. I texted Heather, but she was already halfway back across the lake. I don’t really remember what happened after that. I was hurting and humiliated and I just wanted to get dry and sit down. 

The ride home was hard, but there’s a strength that kicks in when the pain hits my threshold, like a backup generator. I remember having an abscess tooth years ago and being too poor to afford to do anything about it other than take Advil or naproxen. I remember getting curious about the nature of pain, asking myself what pain was, what it wanted from me, what it was trying to tell me. When it gets that bad, the fighting it is worse than the pain itself so you let yourself go in the pain and you let the pain take up as much space as it does and you breathe. In and out. Deep. Smooth. Exhale longer than the inhale. Regulate your nervous system. You are not dying even though your amygdala is on red alert. You have a fibromyalgia and a bruised tailbone and you forgot your Advil tonight. 

It’s like this for some people, but what I’m grateful for is that it’s not always this hard. What I’m grateful for is that there’s something in me that loved seeing those birds and those flowers and that lake against that setting sun and I will try again. Next time we know to use the valve from the hand pump on the electric pump to get it to the right psi. Next time we will remember appropriate medication. Next time maybe we leave a little sooner and don’t forget the keys. There’s always an opportunity for it to be better if you are willing to try again. Heather taught me that kind of patience. The patience of getting back up. The patience of bravery. I remember saying to Heather on the way home, ”I don’t know how to explain to you that I’m not ok but that it’s ok.” She said it was fine, I didn’t need to explain. There’s a difference between pain and misery. Pain is mandatory in life. Misery is optional.

And then, eventually, finally, the waiting is over. We made it home. I got out of the Jeep, took the pills, and laid on my side under heat until I was ok again. And that’s the thing. That’s the whole point of all of this. I was ok again. I’m always ok again. The pain always returns to a tolerable level. The panic attack always abates. The nightmare always ends. It always gets good again. No matter what happens throughout the day, I end every day exactly where I want to be.

Heather’s Rebuttal: 

Andie is correct we do tend to be photo negatives of each other but in the good ways, we are like yin and yang. I don’t think we were more different at first, I think we’ve always had the same core beliefs and we’ve just nurtured them together as we’ve grown in our relationship. Nature is my church, it’s where I feel closest to God and those I’ve lost in this life. Andie always seems to see me as patient but I don’t always feel that I am, I do try my best to be patient with all things in life but it can be hard. 

I do always try to make sure Andie knows we can always leave if she needs to but that doesn’t always mean I’m happy about doing so, but those two things can both be true, it’s ok if I’m disappointed we have to leave something but I care more about her well being than any event/adventure we are on, those can always be done again if needed. For instance the Purple Martin migration at Nimisila happens every August. The Martins, which are large swallows, are making their way to the Amazon basin of South America for the winter and Nimisila has these wonderful grass beds in the middle of it and it’s the perfect place for them to fly into, grab a good dinner, rest for the night and then take off again in the morning. You can watch the birds from the shoreline but being out on the water near the grass beds, behind the safety of the do not enter buoys so you are not disrupting them, has hundreds to thousands of them fly in is just amazing.

Andie does almost always bring some type of crochet project with her so a lot of times, like this trip, and she is generally ok going back to the jeep and crocheting while she waits if I need to finish something before we can leave.  Even if the doors are unlocked in my jeep if they key fob is not near the alarm will go off when you open the doors, I wasn’t thinking and did not send the keys back with Andie when she paddled to shore to wait on us. I was sitting in my kayak watching the birds and all of a sudden from shore all I could hear was my jeep alarm going off. Andie seems to think I was patient but all I can recall is being frustrated, not necessarily at her but that I didn’t think to give her the keys, and I started paddling as hard as I could back to shore because all I would think is if I was any of these people who came to watch the birds I’d be so annoyed at this car alarm going off. About half way back the alarm shut itself off but it was already dark at this point and the bird watching was done so I just continued back.

I got to shore and my sister and friend were not far behind us so I went up to the jeep and checked on Andie and she was ok at this point so I got her stuff sorted in the jeep and then got all of the rest of the stuff loaded up and we headed for home. Once home we took care of Andie’s pain, as we do when we need to and the day was still a good day and a great experience. 

One thing I tell Andie all the time is that it’s just part of the day, not the whole day. Days are not always all good or all bad, you just have to focus on the good parts, they are what matter.