The Grad School Diaries: The Day of the Quail

If you’ve never seen one before, the California Valley Quail (the official State Bird of California) might look like something out of a Japanese children’s cartoon come to life, with their bobbing topknot feathers and their scuttling, scurrying gait. They’ve very endearing creatures; not majestic, like the huge California condors, or deadly like the peregrine falcon, or shrouded in centuries of folklore and myth like the great horned owl, but they’re probably the most appealing of California’s wild birds. And they love to strut around on the wall behind the house in which we are staying…

We’re in Apple Valley, a growing community in the High Desert, north-east of Los Angeles. It’s called “High” because it’s a plane half a mile or more above sea level, and it’s a desert because it’s on the reverse slope of the modest costal range surrounding LA, which keeps all but a few inches of rain from getting here each year. Whether you would consider it a forsaken wasteland, home to Joshua trees, prickly pear cactus, and not much else, or a wondrous place of clear skies, open plains, majestic mountains, and a complex ecosystem depends mainly on your point of view. Although the season in which you visit is also a factor: you’re less likely to appreciate the place during its 110-degree summer months than in the clear, crisp fall and winter weather…

But love it or hate it, this is the community my wife’s mother and stepfather chose as their home base (between voyages all over the US and beyond, they’d always come back here), and it is here we have come to support my wife and her stepfather in whatever way we can while she attempts to put her mother’s affairs in order. You can accumulate a lot of stuff in 65 years, and my mother-in-law was the type who never threw ANYTHING away; my wife has been uncovering documents that pre-date her own birth, and photographs and artifacts that go back even longer. It’s a surreal time for all parties involved, I think. The High Desert teems with life, and the rapidly-expanding communities of Apple Valley and Victorville have brought a huge bustle and sprawl to this part of the world. But with its spirit gone, the house – and our perceived world – are eerily silent now; a stillness far more alien than the barren wastelands beyond…

And yet, as always, life goes on – this morning in the form of three fine quail, who hopped up onto the wall in the back garden. Two were males, and they treated us to some elaborate threat and dominance displays in a remarkably peaceful contest over the third quail, a splendid female. Eventually the larger and more impressive bird won, and his rival scurried off into the brush. The victor took off after the female bird, who fled the other way, down the wall and off into the vacant lot beyond, leaving me to laugh with wonder and reflect on the scene…

My late mother-in-law loved her quail as much as I love my cardinals (and chickadees and finches); and some day, long after I’ve gone, people in both cities will still be watching the great continuity of wild birds performing outside the window, and the Great Cycle of Life will go on. It’s hardly the most original thought I’ve ever had, nor the most profound; there’s a reason I study management and write (mostly) humor. But it’s certainly not the least comforting thought I’ve ever had, either. In the end, all of us are only short-term passengers on our Spaceship Earth, and someday we, too, will all have gone on to whatever destiny awaits us – but I like to think that the wild birds (or their descendants, at least) will still be here…

I would never have come to this place on my own – but had I never done so, I would not have gotten to meet the quail and see them march and strut. For that matter, in 43 years I’d never had any desire to go to Central Michigan, let alone live there, but had I not done so I would never have met a robin named Hood, a finch named Atticus, a squirrel named Rocky, or a cardinal named Friar Tuck…

Life is not always kind to us. But I think it’s only fair to say that sometimes it’s better if we don’t know where our journey is going to take us, or who we will meet along the way…