Not yet September, and fall is already chasing summer away: the afternoon light has lost the gold of midsummer; the mornings are cool and smell like things leaving. Two months after we retreated from Sigurd Peak in defeat, I still haven’t written anything about the field season. Perhaps it’s because time seems meaningless these days: two months, two days, two years—it’s all feels the same. Perhaps it’s because the field season was so miserable.

Sunset over the mountains near the Utzilus site.

It’s hard to say what, exactly, made the season so. Certainly the pandemic made things challenging, adding a level of uncertainty and stress to work that is inherently uncertain and stressful. The weather undoubtedly contributed, being so cold and rainy that we were forced to reschedule trips and dig out our down jackets even in late June. As always, the work was physically grueling and emotionally exhausting. But perhaps the worst was that we only found two nests.

My morning routine involves covering my feet in duct tape to prevent blisters.

This is not to say that the season as a whole was a bust. Because of the pandemic, our crew was divided into strict teams. Other teams found a number of nests, even more than last year. But Gina and I, despite all our effort and suffering, found only two—and one of them failed less than two weeks later. The season’s last straw was a minor injury while scrambling up the steep and rocky Sigurd Valley Trail that ended our final stint early and on a downcast note. And so, as I spread my dripping tent out on the floor of my room to dry, I was glad the season was over and I felt no desire to write a single word about it.

A beautiful day in the Squamish Valley.

“What happens to your birds after you’re done with them?” my physiotherapist asked, after I told him I studied northern goshawks. “Do they get to go back to the wild?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “They were always in the wild. We just stop bothering them.”

That’s my favorite thing about “the wild”: it was always there. Before I drove up the Squamish Valley, before I climbed up the Ashlu Canyon, it was there and the goshawks were there in it. And even though I am no longer in it with them, and may never be again, it makes me glad to know those goshawks are still out there. I just stopped bothering them.

Our last, gloomy day in the field, looking out over the confluence of the Ashlu and Squamish Rivers.