All a naturalist wants for Christmas is a lot
The menorahs, having worked their eight-dayslong miracle of banishing the darkness, are now back in storage, and well-lit Christmas trees and Yule logs are taking over the task of keeping the longest nights of the year at bay. To be sure, as the winter solstice—the shortest day of 2023—makes its scheduled arrival on Thursday the 21st at precisely 10:27 in the evening, all the longrange forecasts I’m reading during the week before the sun traces its lowest daily path across the ridge sky are suggesting that it will neither feel nor look like a proper winter holiday. According to weather officials, meteorological winter may have started at the beginning of December, but by Naturalist standards, the first true winter’s day, defined as a 24-hour-long period when the temperature never rises above the freezing mark, has yet to “grace” us with its frigid presence. Of course, there’s been no sign of snow.
Maybe it’s El Niño. Maybe it’s global climate change.
Whatever the cause of our less-than-Currier-andIves landscape, Christmas is almost here, weather or not. And if that statement about the calendar causes readers to slap their foreheads in horror and utter an anguished, “Oy... and I still don’t have a gift for that naturalist on my list,” well, relax, there’s still time. We’ve not yet investigated the last category in the hallowed Naturalist’s Gift Guide for the Perplexed.
That would be Order Number Four: Stuff.
Now, I have to admit that I probably could have done a slightly better job in the nomenclature department, but this all-encompassing name nicely encapsulates this wide-ranging grouping. Besides, it was late, and “stuff” was the best that ChatGPT could come up with... (Truth in journalism: the first part of the statement is true; I hope the second half is about as far from the Naturalist’s nonAI reality as possible.)
Whatever you’d like to call the final gifting collective, it definitely lends itself to last-minute shopping possibilities.
Consider, for example, offering the gift of travel. This could be as simple and budget-friendly as a call I received last week from my long-time dear friend and neighbor telling me that there was an adult Bald Eagle perched in a tree close-by, and would I like to see it? Would I ever, and though the great bird had already headed elsewhere in the few minutes it took me to get my gear ready—perhaps it was unusually skittish over the
hideous news about the indicted Montana eagle murderers: may Simon Paul and Travis John Branson, if found guilty, and everyone who bought eagle parts from them, not fly free for a
long, long time—the mere presence of the white-headed, soul-stirring raptor was present enough. This was a case in which the thought truly counted.
I often feel the same
blessed sense of giftedness when I log into my account—free, incidentally—on the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s eBird