Their route became more arduous and terrifying because of unthinking development, their normal rest stops on the way to their summer habitat taken away one by one. They had to fly farther between food and water. More died along the way. While in South America, the warming climate meant their preferred habitat moved higher and higher up the mountainside—and became more degraded. With more competition from other species seeking cooler temperatures. A susceptibility in a smaller population to disease had created micropandemics that didn’t help. Spiked use of pesticides and herbicides everywhere had taken its toll.

Finally, it was not so much that this fierce bird had given up or given in but that the numbers were too few. Even if some birds could now winter in Southern California due to climate change. It was still too long a migration for too small a group.

I had a vision of that last small expedition, the last group, setting out. Maybe it was just a dozen, maybe less. Tried to imagine it as Silvina had. Trying their best to overcome those obstacles. Each one of those individuals on an epic journey. One they never came back from.

But: the joy. Even then, there must have been moments of joy and of contentment on the journey. Sanctuaries and times of plenty. It wasn’t just a winnowing. It was a life. I held fast to that. Even if it was selfish, for myself.

[17]

All the other usual things. Precious as any amount of money, but worthless until they’re gone. Until you really feel the loss.

My husband’s sister, her husband, and her son came over the next evening—they lived three hours away. Just far enough they didn’t visit often. So we were supposed to put them up that week. He knew I could only take a couple days before claustrophobia set in, but I would be gone by weekend.

The son always brought out the tour guide in our daughter, so they often were outside. The husband talked seldom and his sister talked too much, though I liked her well enough. They just wrong-footed you with their extremes. She was in pharmaceuticals. Kept mistaking what I did for what she did, because we both used “strategy.” Kept asking myself what strategy had led me to mutilate a dead hummingbird.

The banal inconvenience of not being able to relax in my pajamas in the evening. The “holiday cheer” I loathed from past experience, of pull-out beds and futons and close quarters in the bathrooms. Past slights between siblings that came out between my husband and his sister that made me roll my eyes because my husband didn’t always know how good he’d had it, family-wise. Dinners laced with too much wine and beer because, underneath it all, we were not always comfortable with one another.