The Oasis This Time by Rebecca Lawton

Author:Rebecca Lawton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Torrey House Press
Published: 2019-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

9.

WHERE THE BIRDS ARE

American Robin

SOMEONE RAPS AT MY KITCHEN WINDOW BEFORE DAWN, and I jump. Who could be visiting so early? The horizon is still emerging as a gray line across the ephemeral lake outside my cabin. I’m not expecting guests at PLAYA, a writers’ and artists’ residency center in Summer Lake, Oregon, a place as remote as Neverland. Someone knocking at my cabin so early, or at all, couldn’t be good. I turn to find an American Robin sitting on an outside sill, reptilian eyes up close to the glass, brittle beak touching it. He taps, pauses, taps again. My pulse settles. Who’s afraid of a big, bad robin besides the early worm out in the lawn? Still, the bird’s persistence rattles me. I’ve a creeping suspicion that he’s mentally ill. Field biologists I’ve worked with have said that abnormal avian behavior is a sign that something’s gone haywire in a bird’s brain.

Later today, Noah—a writer and birder par excellence staying in the next cabin on the PLAYA grounds—will dispel the notion that the robin is psychologically disturbed. Such tapping is common this time of year. The bird is simply failing the “mirror test,” not recognizing his own face in the glass. This someone-gently-rapping sees a possible mate or a territorial rival instead of a reflection of himself. It’s normal for the robin to disregard the data.

Noah says, “He won’t stop until you close your curtains.”

I loathe shutting out some of the most dazzling light on the planet, here on the spectacular edge of the Great Basin. From dawn until nightfall, the sun plays tricks with perennial dust storms across the surface of shallow, changeable Summer Lake. Thunderstorms blow up in great, sweeping clusters of murky-bottomed clouds. Every minute brings a different sky.

Still, I shut my drapes so I can get back to work.

During my first residency here, I labored on a novel manuscript sunrise to sundown, as an ant works. The light show over the lake would catch my eyes, and I’d look, but just for a moment before shaking it off. Only in the afternoons, once I’d poured my best hours onto the page, would I go out exploring.

Now I’m using the same method, this time struggling to get something down about water in this basin. There are snippets of dialogue I’ve overheard, bits of conversation. One longtime resident of the valley has let me in on a few of its water secrets. She says the place is bursting with change. There are rich reserves of underground water here, but people are beginning to worry about its durability. The markets for Oregon-grown alfalfa go far beyond the borders of the state—and beyond the continent. Alfalfa from PLAYA’s neighbors goes overseas; European and Asian markets buy up the local hay, grown using precious, ancient water that’s been stored underground for many centuries. The community is pumping the aquifer as if it’s endless. No amount of natural recharge could recoup the depletions in kind.

So foreign markets take a large share of Lake County’s fresh water.

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