 |
| With no previous experience of cycling, the author completed almost 18,000 miles in 12 month and saw more than 600 species |
THERE is no getting away from it - Dorian Anderson was more than a bit of a tearaway in his younger days.
A birder since the age of seven, he sometimes sought alternative distractions near his family's home in the leafy Chestnut Hill suburb of Philadelphia.
For light relief, he would while away a moment or so by hurling rocks at trains rattling past on the railroad.
And come Halloween, there were occasions when he would climb to the platform of the footbridge of the same railroad and drop pumpkins on the rooves of trains as they passed underneath.
This doubtless scared the wits out of the on-board passengers, but, at least to this particular youngster, it was, "unadulterated joy".
As he grew older, the author's addictive hunger for thrills took him to darker territory - dangerously excessive consumption not just of alcohol but also of cocaine and Ecstasy.
Despite all these misdemeanours, there was sufficient about his constitutional resilience, his intellect and his temperament to allow him to pursue a brilliant career as one of the United States' leading neuroscience research scientists, with many scientific breakthroughs to his name.
If he had continued in academia, he would surely have become a professor in his field, possibly while still in his thirties.
But no. To the horror of his American mother, a teacher, and his English father, a lawyer, with both of whom his relationship was already a little fragile, he jacked in university life to go on a journey of self-discovery.
With no previous cycling experience, he set off on board a Surly Disc Trucker touring cycle on a January-to-December trek which took him through 28 states across no fewer than 17,800 miles
Along the way, Anderson made it a mission to see at least 600 different bird species, a target which he achieved with a further 18 as a bonus.
As the narrative zips along, he treats us to his breathtaking encounters with the likes of snowy owl, snail kite, king eider, Wilson's snipe, brown-capped rosy-finch, red-legged honeycreeper, whooping crane, greater sage-grouse and a spectacular bust-up between two hummingbird species - blue-throated and magnificent.
Any particular highlight? It was his sighting of a rufous-backed robin.
"It was the year's best feeling," he enthuses. "A natural high no amount of alcohol or drugs could replicate."
One early delight for Dorian, while in Massachusetts, was when, out of the blue, he received a tip-off from a teenage enthusiast, Miles Brengle, that a thick-billed murre, typically a species of the faraway ocean wave, was within viewing distance from a wharf in Gloucester harbour.
Having rushed to the scene to view the bird, the grateful author tells his informant: "Too bad I'm an alcoholic and you're only 14 - otherwise we'd crack open a beer to celebrate!"
Yes! As he acknowledges, the author had become, alas, an alcoholic.
Sometimes in the book, there are detours as he reflects briefly, but informatively, on the nature of songbird migration, on eco-interventions by man, on the pros and cons (in the U.S.) of carrying a small firearm (!) and on the similarities of birding and fishing - "while you're waiting, you dream a bit".
Evidently, with his lungs subjected to all-too-regular drenchings from exhaust fumes, it was seldom less than an arduous and death-defying adventure.
Sometimes he was so cold that he could hear his own teeth chattering like an "old-fashioned typewriter". At other times, the heat was so oppressive that the sweat pouring from his eyebrows stung his eyes and light-headedness rendered his movement clumsy
En route, notably on Highway 17 in South Carolina, there were frequent near-misses, often involving passing trucks, whose drivers were often liberal with their abuse, and even one occasion when he was knocked from his machine by a hit-and-run female motorist.
"Each year, nearly 1,000 cyclists are killed by motorists," notes the author. "Over 100,000 more are severely hurt or permanently injured.
"Worse, some drivers enjoy harassing cyclists - no amount of caution can protect a rider from these deranged imbeciles."
 |
| Dorian channelled his addictive tendencies from drink and drugs to birding |
On multiple occasions, the dedicated cyclist was chased by dogs - most frighteningly outside Tucson in Arizona when a pair of German Shepherds exploded out of the brush with "unparalleled fury".
What happens next is one of the most riveting episodes in this superb 261-page book.
Then there were the punctures which sparked in our hero the sort of indignation familiar to anyone who has seen John Cleese's comic creation Basil Fawlty in TV's Fawlty Towers.
"Each time I thought I was close to securing the tyre, it popped off the rim somewhere else, my frustration festering with each failed attempt.
"Raising the rubber loop above my head, I thrashed the ground with it a dozen times, my meltdown ending only when my shoulder felt it might dislocate."
One of the motels where he stayed overnight is described as "somewhere between a homemade porno film and a heroin overdose".
Oh yes, and there was also the time when he came off his bike and toppled into a a ditch "filled with a suspicious sludge that looked like a chocolate slushy and smelled like dog sh**"
A journey through Hell? Sometimes, yes, but there were compensations aplenty - not just the birds.
"The folks I met along the way were a treasure trove of personality, quirks, stories and support,"he writes.
"For every dumbass who harassed me on the road, five curious folks offered to buy me lunch, and a dozen generous souls opened their homes to me.
"Their unyielding assistance meant the world to me."
Most important of all, the cycling and the birding - plus the support of Sonia, the woman in his life - transformed Anderson's perspective on life.
He acknowledges that his addictive tendencies remain, but he has also learned that they are transferrable from alcohol and drugs
He reflects: "If I put the energy I once put into drinking and drugging into other channels and projects, then there was no limit to what I could achieve."
Birding Under The Influence - Cycling Across America in Search of Birds and Recovery is published in paperback and e-book by Chelsea Green (www.chelseagreen.com) and available wherever books are sold.
No comments:
Post a Comment