Author: Steve

We’ve finished the job in Santa Fe. This was a tough one. It’s not that
the financial statements were difficult. This was a difficult job on a
different level. This is the job we were supposed to do a couple weeks ago. It’s a small
nonprofit. I was coming to work with one person, the Treasurer. The job
got delayed because he died. They still wanted the job done, so here we
are, working with the wife of the Treasurer. He was so proud of how he’d
gotten everything together, and he was so excited about getting the first
audit ever for the organization, his wife was anxious to complete what he
had started, what was so important to him. What a delightful woman. What strength at such a time. And how many
parallels could we draw between their lives and ours? They were our age.
They started dating in high school. They had been married the same length
of time. Kids. Grandkids. This stage in their lives they end up working
with nonprofit organizations… He was in great shape. He paid attention to his health. He exercised. But
he was sixty. Right in the middle of their plans he died of a heart attack. So this one was difficult.

Matt, Kari, and Alex.

We’re still not birding. We’re driving. But, are you familiar with the
lark bunting? It is the state bird of Colorado, a migrating bird,
distinctly colored while it lives out on the plains in the summer, then
migrates south and lives the winter as another indistinct brown bird. We’ve
probably seen a lot of them in south Texas in the winter, but not recognized
them. We’ve seen and identified so many birds, but never the state bird of
Colorado. Well, today that changed. Flying across the road right in front
of us on the wide-open desert plains, distinctive black birds with white
shoulders. Finally, the state bird of Colorado… in New Mexico. Stopped for the Night in Santa Fe. Arrived early enough to meet with a
prospective client, a nonprofit that provides technical support to
environmental organizations all over the Western United States and Canada.
That meeting went well. I think I need to get back on line and check the
licensing requirements in a few more states.

In all fairness, I should mention the lingering eau de guano fragrance that
accompanies the bat exit from the cave. It’s part of the experience.

Drove to New Mexico on Monday. Stopped at Carlsbad Caverns for the night.
We’re through birding for a while, so we didn’t stop for birds. We didn’t
stop to descend into the caverns either. We stopped so we could catch the
flight of the bats. It is quite a spectacle this flight of the bats. The
natural entrance to the caverns is an open pit, with a bat observation
amphitheater built into the hill on one side. In the afternoon, this open
pit is filled with cave swallows darting in and out, chirping and swirling
the last of their bug eating business of the day, before they settle down
for the night. The cave swallows are the warm-up act. Just before dark,
the main event begins. Not a single bat. Nothing. Then, suddenly, four
hundred thousand famished insect eating machines. They can’t come out all
at once. They flow. The flowing swirling mass makes it’s way to the sky.
Out of the pit in a counterclockwise swirl, three rotations, forming a
single undulating stream off into the night sky. The stream follows a fluid
path, not like a stream of water, but more like a wandering wisp of smoke,
flowing away, then coming back. When it wanders directly overhead, we’re
bathed in the fluttering of thousands of tiny bat wings. Each bat weighs half an ounce. All these bats together will consume three
tons, the equivalent of three Volkswagen beetles in weight, of insects
tonight. It takes thirty minutes for four hundred thousand bats to blow out
of the cave. They will feed all night, up to forty miles away, and return
by four am. On the way to the bat program, a scott’s oriole flew across the road in
front of us.