The hills in Danehy Park in Cambridge are steep but friendly, and they overlook acres of marshland, which in autumn turns to colors of gold and dusty rose that resemble a Pissarro. I was taking advantage of this vista one gorgeous day last December by walking circuits up and down the incline with my 60-pound dog. Whenever we got to the rise we would stop and survey the meadows below, which on a normal weekday are mostly desolate. But on this day the empty paths gave way to a motley stream of people: a burly man with a tripod ; a small, hesitant woman with a notebook ; a lone fellow who tentatively approached the others. All of them seemed irritated by my (and particularly my dog's) peripheral presence. It didn't take long for me to realize these people possessed the electric silence of birders: Something wonderful was in those marshes, and they wanted me and my dog -- bumbling, land-beholden mammals that we were -- to go away.
Souls of the new machine
How our reliance on the online universe can endanger the vital tool of narrative
So go away we did, and I came home haunted by the image of all these strangers, drawn together by a shared passion and utterly silent in their congregation. A decade ago this would have become a fine though indistinct memory, but now I had an easy means by which to ponder the mystery. The next day I Googled "danehy bird sighting " and got the gateway I was looking for: stories of Empidonax flycatcher and orange-crowned warblers and American kestrels. "The Alewife Peregrine was not in its usual place," wrote one astute birder about our morning at the park, "but was enjoying breakfast on top of the first building. Nice day."
As it was for me, too, because now I'd found out what all the fuss was about -- now I could eavesdrop on the conversation. Still, my newfound information, so easily retrieved, had attached to it a trace of melancholy regret. What if I had simply kept the dog quiet and approached the birders? I might have learned all about the flycatcher and the falcon -- everything I learned online -- and enjoyed as well a moment of human connection. Can you imagine E. M. Forster writing, "Only Google"?
READER COMMENTS »
View reader comments » Comment on this story »