Baaúuwatshiile, the meadowlark

does not sing in the desert

I decided to spend the first few days of May in Arizona visiting my parents. They moved from Montana to Sierra Vista, an hour southeast of Tuscon, a couple of summers ago. It’s a beautiful place, and their backyard backs right up onto the Fort Huachuca army base which is just a broad expanse of desert, no buildings visible from their house. When my stepsister Joan and I are there together we spend a lot of time by the fence watching for coyotes. Joan also provided an animal camera and it has netted some stunning video of javelina families ambling along at night as well as daytime roadrunners and the hilarious-sounding Gambel’s quail.

Sunset over Fort Huachuca, AZ, May 2023

Joan and I drove all of our parents’ shit in a 26’ Penske truck from Missoula to Sierra Vista in August 2021 and we rocked the whole endeavor: matching outfits,¹ ready-to-roll attitude, endless hilarity with the air-ride driver’s seat. We stayed in one of those inflatable dome things near the Grand Canyon one night and experienced monsoon conditions all through Arizona, a scary way to drive a giant truck on a packed freeway.

After reading my first Barbara Kingsolver book, The Bean Trees, way back in the day, I thought I wanted to live in Tucson. I had resided in California as a teen and loved the desert at Joshua Tree.² I recall feeling both tricked and amazed at how dead it appears until you walk out into it and see the tiny creatures and flowers, the living things surviving in that dry place.

So when my parents moved that way, I thought I might follow them. And I do love visiting. This time I added three birds to my ID-by-sound list, because I heard them unfailingly, every morning. One morning I turned on my birding app and in one six-minute stretch, it identified SEVENTEEN species! Even if a third of them are wrong,³ that’s still impressive.

Here’s a short audio of desert birds. Of note: Gambel’s quail at :03 (sounds like a circus noise), Gila woodpecker at :09 (sounds like someone plinging a wire) for about 5 seconds, cactus wren at :21 (pretty quiet, sounds like a dying car starter), before the raven. Otherwise, mostly house sparrows and traffic. There’s a lot of background noise. I tried to make this clip do my bidding re: volume, but unsuccessful.

Most of my birds are, of course, northern Rockies birds, although a scant few from my Virginia upbringing remain in my memory, such as a bobwhite and a bluejay. One of my very favorite birds here is the meadowlark, in part because like the robin, it signals spring. Meadowlarks are beautiful to look at, sporting a yellow breast adorned with a black necklace under their chins. And they sing to each other across hillsides and make simply lovely noise.

In my work as an online course developer for Indigenous languages, I have accidentally internalized the Crow word for meadowlark: baaúuwatshiile. This happened because I created a lesson where students hear the songs of various birds (instead of the English names for the birds) and associate the songs with the Crow words. I have listened to this lesson over and over to make edits and tweaks. Now, when I hear a meadowlark’s song in real life outside my window, the Crow word comes to me. You can hear it here on the Crow dictionary.

Western Meadowlark, CSKT Bison Range, spring 2021

No meadowlarks sing in the desert near my parents’ new home. And every time I go, I am reminded that despite the magic of the desert – the lizards and rabbits, blooming ocotillo and the delightful birds, the sunny weather – I love where I live. Nothing outclasses a Missoula summer, or our glorious fall colors with cool mornings and bluebird days, even the moodiness and treachery of our winter winds, cold and dark. Even right now as we endure heavy rain, I sit with my windows wide open for the fresh, crisp air.⁴ The hills are edging toward verdant and all the little waterways are overspilling. The mountains surrounding me and the meadowlarks that sing to the spring – all of that is too much a part of me to ever think of leaving it behind.

1. Our shirts said Unit Movers on the front, because our parents’ nickname is The Parental Units, and the backs showed a truck catching air with the catchphrase “Making ‘em wait since ‘86” which is the year they got married. We felt clever.

2. helped, no doubt, by the March 1987 release of Joshua Tree by U2, my favorite band at the time and…I’ll admit it, I still love them.

3. Sometimes it does get them wrong. Like last week when it identified a car horn as a wild turkey.

4. And also because I just cooked a pan of bacon and my house can be an airtight box.