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Everybody's got "the story." For some folks – most famously Oprah – it's the "aha moment," that wonderful instant in time when a vital, incredibly important, life-changing realization strikes, the heavens part, the world divides into "before" and "after," and the path ahead suddenly becomes clear.
Before the "aha moment" entered our lexicon, there was the "Eureka moment," inextricably linked to Archimedes jumping out of his bathtub a couple of millennia ago and excitedly running naked down the street at the recognition of water displacement, which was a very big deal.
Well, "aha" and "Eureka" moments are great and all, but there's something beatific and divine and, let's face it, bland and rather undramatic about them in the long run. I think "aha," and I think celestial energy and light flowing down from the heavens shedding enlightenment without irritation or effort or sweat or rueful discovery.
The story I'm sure everyone has lurking in their past and marking an important fork in their personal road has a bit more of an edge and a definite learning curve to it. I call it the "I knew it!!" moment. It's that flash of genius when you realize you've been listening to the wrong voices (sometimes your own), ignoring your own insight and intuition, turning a blind eye to the truth. It's that moment when a wife discovers her husband was, in fact, cheating, and the lipstick on his collar really wasn't hers; when a friend’s good advice isn't nearly as good as it seemed; and when the little old lady who lives down the lane really is running the drug ring you suspected but just couldn't put your finger on because of the smell of her gingerbread cookies wafting into the street as you passed.
The "I knew it!!" moment sometimes come with a tinge of regret, often comes with a "once bitten, twice shy" moral, and always with the conviction that listening to your inner voice is the most important counsel you'll keep from now on. It can appear while you're laughing out loud, crying with disappointment, or having coffee with a tart-tongued buddy. And despite our best intentions, if we're slow learners, we can even get more than just one.
In my case, I'll admit to being denser than a gourmet cheesecake at times, and I have several of these road markers along the way. The most portentous, serious, highest stakes incident involved ignoring that inner voice in favor of taking one more run at a wood fence on a tall horse. I ended up with an ambulance, lights and sirens, a backboard, a whole lotta pain, and the words "You have a broken back" to ponder for the following three months in a body cast. But I'd rather not use that reference point when all I really need to think of are...pelicans.
My road to revelation was a two-lane asphalt ribbon running through the Horicon Marsh, an inspirational break in a long drive from the courthouse where I work to the University of Wisconsin-Madison where my daughter was receiving an award of some sort that came with a very nice dinner. Despite no time to spare, no binoculars or field guide, and no hiking clothes either, I still stole ten minutes to travel a three-mile driving loop through the marsh – a scenic route recommended by a cop I work with. So I'd rather watch birds than people. Sue me!
I drove deep into the marsh, far from passing traffic, and parked by a boardwalk angled directly into the marsh. Then I stepped into a world of water and nature and trilling sounds and wonder. As the late afternoon sun shimmered on the water and illuminated the tall vegetation beyond, there were myriad takeoffs and landings occurring around me, splashings and wing beats and fluttering sounds. Something white caught my eye, and I stared in wonder as three huge, white birds soared in from my periphery and came in for a landing past where the glimmering plane of water was interrupted by rushes and cattails and an air of mystery.
I stood, transfixed and mesmerized until they disappeared. The golden sunlight shown on gleaming white feathers with wingtips tipped in inky black. From my far-off vantage point, there was a joy and an ease and a lilt to their flight as they circled and floated and finally landed gracefully in the reeds, well-protected from prying eyes. These birds were huge. They seemed the size of hang-gliders, easily the biggest birds I'd ever seen.
And there was a flash of something familiar to them. For an instant I thought, “Pelicans!!" But then reason and rationality set in, and I shut that thought down. "Nah, couldn't be." Too big by far, entirely wrong in color, a thousand miles from the Georgia shoreline where I used to see them – skimming the waves and palm trees, overhead like prehistoric throwbacks before alighting by the dozens on a sandbar in the Atlantic.
I got back into my car, drove to the awards dinner, and wondered all night and for days after what exactly I had seen. Could they possibly be whooping cranes? I knew that a few of these rare birds had been sighted recently somewhere in the marsh and that seeing them was like finding the birdwatcher's Holy Grail. Could I have been among the chosen few?
I pondered the mystery for the next few weeks. Called a Department of Natural Resources warden I worked with on occasion and asked his advice. Where had I seen this trio, he asked. We weren't entirely sure that the area of vegetation was a customary place for whooping cranes to nest. Had I thought about the possibilities of trumpeter swans, he wondered. What about herons?
I stewed over the puzzle for weeks, reaching out to other birdwatchers with little satisfaction. The optimist in me really hoped I'd seen a trio of whooping cranes. What an accomplishment!! What bragging rights!! But as I thumbed through my well-worn bird guides, I realized that this couldn't be the answer. Whooping cranes would have the same silhouette in flight as the slightly smaller sandhill cranes I could identify in my sleep – a vaguely alien form, as though you took a goose and added an element of elastic to it, neck strangely thin and elongated, long legs trailing out behind like twigs. I'd caught just a fragmentary glimpse, but there was an elegance of movement that could not be denied. Just like a few bars of Beethoven's Fur Elise can be mistaken for nothing else.
Likewise for herons – the size was off by a lot. What I'd seen was enormous. And the more I looked at the descriptions and listing for trumpeter swans, the more I recognized that the flight pattern was wrong. The birds I'd seen soared and glided and flew with a playfulness that swans and geese, I knew, just didn't have. If you've ever paid attention to a goose in flight, you know that it's a big-ass bird. There's a lot of meat to haul from one point to the next, and there's no room in that equation for burning fuel to have fun. A goose reminds me of a C-130 transport plane; it moves a lot of weight and flies in a no-frills straight line.
I had reached a dead end. The mystery was still alive and well, but I was all out of leads. I tried to push it out of my mind.
A few weeks later, though, I was back at the marsh, this time for a leisurely morning of hiking and bird watching, a sanity break in a busy life, a battery recharge at the font of nature. Sneakers on and binoculars looped around my neck, I walked, and I sat, and I kept an eye out for another glimpse of those white visitors. No luck. As I headed home I took a different route, one that went past the wildlife refuge's main visitor center. I stopped in, looked around, stepped out on the deck and gazed at the marsh spread out before me. A ranger was working in the office, and I put the puzzle to her, explained the inspiring thrill of the sighting, the inquiries, the ponderings, the frustration.
"I'll bet they're white pelicans," she said.
WHAT!!!
Unbeknownst to my local expert fifty miles away, the Horicon Marsh is a summer breeding ground for thousands of white pelicans. I hadn't even known they existed. I'd simply asked the wrong person for advice. The ranger showed me a postcard in the gift shop. Sure 'nuf, they looked right. I ripped through my bird guides to the section on pelicans I'd never thought to open, and there it was, in black and white and full color. With a wingspread of nine feet, no wonder I'd thought they were the biggest damn birds I'd ever seen.
And with that, I smiled, even laughed a little. "I knew it!!" I thought in triumph.
Now as I blunder through every day since then, full of judgment calls and leaps of faith and decisions big and small, if I need a little validation for the idea of trusting my gut, I just look back at a warm, spring afternoon in a Wisconsin marsh and think...
Pelicans.
Mary T. Wagner is a criminal prosecutor, college professor, and an award-winning author and essayist. At forty she switched career horses from journalism to law after a serious riding accident put her in a body cast for three months. Eventually she returned to creative writing and began penning her blog “Running with Stilettos.” Wagner has a fondness for photography, Belgian chocolate, Irish castles, great shoes, long clean shorelines, classic cartoons, big skies and Lee Child "Reacher" novels. Multiple degrees earned in the school of life include being a mother of four, Girl Scout leader, truck stop waitress, cocktail waitress, office temp, judicial clerk, and radio talk show host. Her third essay collection, Fabulous in Flats, was published in 2011. A key piece of Wagner advice: if you have something good to say about someone, say it sooner rather than later. The ripple effect of your positive words can be infinite. Her e-mail address: Mary T. Wagner