February 2020

This Altimira oriole’s face kind of sums up my thoughts on the year.

Divorce just blows. There’s no other way around it. It’s not fun and it’s certainly nothing like the booze filled Divorce Train to a ranch in Reno that was featured in the 1939 classic movie The Women. But if there is any upside to suddenly being on your own after twenty years of shared decisions…it’s that ALL THE THINGS are back on the table: jobs in remote areas, eating microwave popcorn for dinner three nights in a row, traveling without checking someone else’s calendar…and where to retire. 

The sidewalk entrance into Estero Llano Grande State Park always gives me a sense of peace.

I’ve always harbored a fantasy of spending my retirement (if that ends up being a possibility for me) in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas. It’s my favorite birding area in the United States. I’ve often said that the day I’m tired of seeing a green jay is the day that it’s time for me to hang up my binoculars. But the idea of a tiny home, with a water feature, native plantings and access to all the Tex Mex food I want and maybe volunteering at Estero Llano Grande just seems like a wonderful way to round out the last part of my life. 

When I tried warming up my ex-husband to the idea he wasn’t having it. I remember I took him down there for work and as we were driving around Harlingen he said, “Man, what a depressing area.”

“What are you talking about, this place is beautiful,” I protested.

“I see why you like the birds and the parks, but this place isn’t beautiful,” he said. 

We saw things with very different lenses. But now retiring in Texas is back on the table and I decided fly down to the Valley in February…it was my last trip on a plane for a looooooong time. But I’m glad that my last plane trip was to a favorite place and not someplace like Mexico, Missouri.

An Audubon’s Oriole at the National Butterfly Center.

This trip, I made a point to stop at the National Butterfly Center, ground zero of the border wall fight. The federal government contractors started clearing the land before the wall project had been announced, much less before any eminent domain procedures had been followed. I started to drive to the property and a sheriff’s car was parked at the entry and told me we that we couldn’t get in. I thought it was odd but check in at the visitor center. “Of course you can get in. Unless they’re doing an active pursuit of people trying to cross, the area is open.”

There’s plenty to see and do around the grounds. It’s meant for butterflies but birds abound there and it’s a great spot for all the Valley specialties and sometimes there are bonuses like the Audubon’s oriole that was hanging out while I was there. The staff and volunteers also showed visitors an eastern screech-owl roosting in a picnic shelter. Here’s a video:

Some graffiti along the fence for the National Butterfly Center.

After walking the grounds for an Audubon’s oriole, I went back and the sheriff was gone. I headed down for more birding and a chance to stick our feet in the Rio Grande itself. 

So many struggles in such a beautiful and serene environment: the struggle for families in dire circumstances doing whatever they can to forge a better life for their kids, no matter how high the cost. The struggle for someone to prove they can do something no matter the cost, they just want a showy legacy that won’t even do what is promised. The struggle of private landowners to have what they own being taken away by a government. All of this as there are struggles with all the plants and wildlife struggling around human made chaos. It’s a heartbreaking beauty in some ways and I wonder how many more years I’ll have to witness this beauty before it’s blocked off by a useless, ugly wall. 

Meep meep. Zip. BANG!

I still have no idea what my future will hold at this point. My life has taken such a strange turn even outside the divorce. But I do hope it includes the valley again.