Putting Passion First
I love birds. I can’t help it. It’s the way I’m wired. Even when I tried to stray away from my passion during teenage years when hormones took over, I eventually found my way back to my true path—getting people excited about birds.Whenever I question what I do or how to prioritize what’s going on in my life, I think of one casual decision I made one fateful day in September of 2003. I had the day off from my job and I had a mountain of laundry waiting for me at home. I checked the weather for Duluth—a two and half hour drive from my Minneapolis apartment. Winds were out of the northwest, which meant that Duluth’s Hawk Ridge would have a good day for observing migrating hawks. They use warm currents of air spiraling off the bluffs and northwest winds to help them migrate south in the fall.
I dropped my husband off at work and considered driving up to Duluth for the day. As I headed north on 35W and approached 694, I thought about the laundry and considered turning around. But I thought to myself, “At the end of my life do I want to think of all the sensible laundry I accomplished, or the cool birding things I saw and learned.”
I opted for birds and I’m glad I did. It turned out to be a record day at Hawk Ridge. On a good migration day, you can see 16,000 – 20,000 hawks fly over. On this particular day, over 100,000 hawks flew over the ridge. It was a record-breaking day and a sight to behold. The sunny skies overhead filled with thousands and thousands of soaring birds of prey.
Whenever I am troubled over what I should be working on vs. what I’d like to be working on, I think about that day and the incredible I sight I was fortunate to witness. Life is short, always put passion first.
—Sharon Stiteler, author, www.birdchick.com