Is it a Yellow-headed Blackbird? I saw it in a distant field through rain-streaked windows while doing forty. But I’m saying, yes, it is.
Two reasons. One is a thing called GISS. An odd word that you might know from birding lit.
The other is an attitude that came from Ernest Hemingway, a guy from American lit.
GISS is a military acronym. Short for “General Impression Size and Shape.” Has to do with identifying enemy aircraft. Now, birders use it.
Hemingway is a writer who believed it was his way or the highway. He didn’t buy self doubt. I’m not wild about his writing, but I admire the confidence he had in his own rightness.
So, when I saw what I thought was a Yellow-headed Blackbird, I used GISS to make the identification.
Then, when that created self doubt, I thought of Hemingway.
I remembered a quote of his. It has nothing to do with birds. No matter. It has to do with two-fisted subjective certainty.
Hemingway said, “What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.”
Nice way of saying that he’d be the judge.
So, I figure I’ll be the judge. As I drive along the country road, daydreaming, I paraphrase Hemingway:
“What is a Yellow-headed Blackbird is what you feel is a Yellow-headed Blackbird after.” And I did feel that.
The bird I saw had the general impression, size and shape of a Yellow-headed Blackbird. It was in the right location, too, the swampy prairie lands far northwest of Chicago.
I don’t care that I saw it for a half-second through a car window from a hundred yards away. I got the GISS thing going. I got the Hemingway arrogance going.
Besides all that, the bird was black. And it had a yellow head.
Abraham, agreed.
I just have to comment because once in a while these posts strike me as unassuming genius that may go missed because of the writer’s humor and subtlety. This could be read as a compelling argument for God, like “Life of Pi,” but a hell of a lot shorter and with a last line to make the careful reader laugh out loud and appreciate the writer’s humility/genius, his way of toppling his own argument while at the same time somehow strengthening it with the subtle precision of a zen surgeon. Existential confidence in the absence of proof isn’t scientific, but it’s a perfect bedfellow for a walk in the woods. Even the post’s title, Hemingway or the Highway, is layered. Whether the author saw a yellow-headed bb may be open to Hemingway’s fractured calculus, but let there be no question of what we just saw here today (and most days) on this blog.
Some years ago a Red Bank N.J. cardiologist, George Sheehan wrote a book on running–that was the title: “On Running.” In his book, Dr. Sheehan took the sport of running to an art form far beyond the physical benefits it provides. He examines the psychological, emotional, and philosophical aspects of running. Our Two-Fisted Bird Watcher, Mike is to bird watching as George Sheehan is to running: transcendent.
Literary opinions: GISS.
Hi Mike:
Hmmm – reality is what we say it is? As for Hemingway: His work in middle and old age, not too good, with some notable exceptions. Hemingway as a young man: artist, idealist, moralist, stylist, conservationist, opportunist, nature lover, truth teller, and imperfect.
I’m with you.
I’ve been searching and searching for one of those and the SECOND I think I have spotted one, I’ll let you know first!
Thanks…I love reading your posts.
Dave