That awkward feeling when you write about your relationship a lot on the Internet and incorporate them into storytelling shows and then that relationship ends and you really don’t want to talk about why, but feel you kind owe people an explanation and well, you get booked for storytelling shows…and one of the first for the year is where that relationship started.

I knew this year was going to be weird. I knew writing was going to be hard. I never anticipated having an ex husband and having to navigate that phrase. But here I am.

The one thing that I know how to do really well is to move forward. Just keep moving forward.

I generally get booked for speaking engagements a year to two in advance. When an opportunity to speak and lead trips at the Virginia Beach Winter Wildlife Festival came along in late 2018, I was all for it. They contacted me over a year out and at the time I thought I’d get Non Birding Bill to come with me because we used to go there with his family for summer vacations when we first together. And because Virginia Beach was where he proposed. We had lots of great memories there. I got many a life bird at Sandbridge Beach and Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

And then life happened. And I found myself heading to a very public event loaded with emotional land mines alone. But, you have to move forward.

I’ve traveled enough that I know my limits on a good weekend and how to pace my flights. I purposely booked myself in early to give myself some time alone in the spaces that would be hard. Places that I wouldn’t want to show people shorebirds and gulls while reliving parts of a marriage this is no longer viable. I mean, c’mon, shorebirds are hard enough to identify as it is with out hardcore break up emotions exploding all around you. No one wants to get a lifer while their field trip leader is a bawling mess.

I went to the mostly deserted beach as cold winter winds accompanied the waves rushing to shore. It was the perfect weather for me in that the moment. I didn’t come to the beach to take in warm rays, I came to scour out emotions. I relived all the wonderful memories. I dusted them off, shined them up and put them on their proper place on the shelves in my mind. I examined the painful recent ones and tucked them away in a box and placed them in a drawer where they don’t need to be seen every day. I cried and was grateful that winter made people avoid the beach and if people saw me, they’d assume my eyes were watering with the cold wind. No one walks the beach to look at other people, the walk to look at the ocean and the crashing waves, perhaps even a gorgeous sunset.

I found someone’s secret in a mason jar on the beach.

As I walked, I came across a mason jar in the sand with a note that had washed ashore. I opened it and read it. It was someone’s secret. I’m a huge fan of PostSecret and read it religiously every Sunday morning over coffee when I wake up, no matter where I am. The secret in the jar was hard and painful and the writer was letting it go on the beach. I took in their secret, I understood it. If PostSecret teaches you anything, it’s that secrets are universal and letting them go or sharing them with the right person is liberating. And in a long exhale I let go of what I was holding on to and hoped that I was helping them let go at the same time. I put the secret back in the mason jar and left it exactly as a found it. Maybe someone else would be walking the beach that night and need to read it?

I continued down the dark beach, met the organizers for dinner and had a lovely time meeting new people and learning about their jobs and what brought them to birding.

My hotel was right on the beach and I was lucky enough to get a room facing the beach. I took a time lapse of the sunrise as I got ready for my day.

A nice big, fat sassy greater black-backed gull in front and a snoozing lesser black-backed gull in the back, surrounded by ring-billed and laughing gulls.

A willet working the shore. I got my first ever willet here over twenty years ago.

I looked out onto the beach and could see gulls and shorebirds. I took some time to enjoy them in the morning sun. I enjoy spending time with birds that I don’t normally see where I live. It’s nice to get a chance to soak up the differences in various gulls when it isn’t -20 degrees Fahrenheit and I take the time to nice not only color differences, but shape and flight patter.

Tundra swans at Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

Apart from my fond memories from over 20 years ago at Virginia Beach, one thing I was particularly excited to revisit was Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge. When I would go on those early vacations we would drive down the road or even bike there. I got so many new birds Back Bay as a young birder: blue grosbeak, sanderling and king rail just to name a few. No jokes about sanderlings, I was a land lubber from Indiana at the time. I also remember the insane amount of cottonmouths. Usually, when you go to a refuge and there’s a sign warning of a potential danger (or a particular bird) it means that someone in the last 10 years. The cottonmouth signs were no joke. They were everywhere in the evening. I remember my ex husband was no fan of them and that if he saw one he would immediately make us leave. There was more than one cottonmouth that I falsely identified as “just a water snake, but don’t touch it.”

When we visited in July all those years ago in a time share, I read the signs at Back Bay that explained that tundra swans spent the winter there. When I moved to Minnesota and saw them by the thousands stopping in Minnesota to carbo load before reaching Back Bay, I always wanted to go back in winter to see them. This trip would be my chance and they did not disappoint. It was nice to finally realize that dream of so long ago.

White ibises were found among the swans.

I never get tired of large flocks of snow geese.

The rest of the festival was wonderful. We birding along the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel—both on it and along side in a boat. I remember years ago after 9-11 having to get a permit to bird along there so I could get an American oystercatcher. My father-in-law went along as something to do, but also I think he was baffled by a new daughter-in-law who said that if they went to a particular island, they would see a very particular bird. Birds fly, why would one be so reliable. We got to the oystercatcher spot, pulled into a parking lot and as soon as we stepped out I said, “There it is.” He was shocked that the bird was so “easy.” Ahhhh, if only they all were so easy.

Long-tailed ducks and a couple of red-breasted mergansers.

The winter offered many delights and I loved looking out at a huge flock of gorgeous long-tailed ducks. Their elegant plumage reminded me of the move The Last Unicorn when King Haggard described watching them on the crests of the waves outside his castle, which stayed on an extended loop in my head the rest of my time at the festival when I saw the long-tailed ducks.

On top of those elegant beauties were scoters, loons and gannets. It was a tremendous day with lots of birders to share it with.

Brown pelican and black-backed gulls from the boat.

One of MANY rainbows I’ve seen this year. Nice to get one in January right over the ocean.

The boat ride made an attempt at chumming and though we didn’t get rarities, I never get tired of seabirds chasing a boat going for raw fish scraps, I especially love watching the giant brown pelicans thrown into the mix. Who knew how much I would rely on these images for backgrounds in Zooms and Teams meetings?

I did give my keynote, something that I generally love to do, these are tried and tested stories. I’ve tested many out on the road and these are the ones that always bring the audience along and even play well with non birders. But I was nervous because phrasing had to be changed with some of them. Would I trip up?

It was a wonderful way to get my toes back in the water.

Bobby Dyer the Mayor of Virginia Beach was my opening act.

I love that the Virginia Beach Mayor gave the opening remarks and a proclamation, it’s important to see local political officials taking birding seriously as an economic force. I apparently did fine, the audience was full and wonderful and afterwards the theater tech running the show said, “Hey, we had a guy here a couple of weeks ago from America’s Got Talent and you got way more laughs than him! I had no idea birds could be funny.”

I think I had a primed audience, but it’s good to know my stories still work, even if I had to make some relationship adjustments.

Speaking of relationships, I flirted heavily with an education bobwhite quail while at Virginia Beach. I try really hard not to be the “ahem, I’m the keynote, can I have this special favor” at birding events, everyone is busy keeping an event running smoothly. However, when the caretaker for an education bird ask, “Hey, you want to feed my boy some wax worms,” and it turns out to be a bobwhite…I’m gonna play that card. How can I resist a cute chonky boi who makes all sorts of squeaky sounds? I’d like to think he was flirting back at me, but his interest went only so far as the few wax worms I had to give him. Listen to those little squeaks, how could anyone deny him anything:

Why can’t someone as cute as that ever show up on Tinder?

A good start to a strange year. That just keeps getting stranger. But we move forward.