Songbirds in the Suburbs
It was gearing day—24 hours in San Diego to gather everything we’d need for our three-week field course in the Sea of Cortez—and Veronica and I had decided to commence our mission at Costco. But we’d barely made it through the low-lying archipelago of special offers and sale items before all the sumptuous distractions started getting to me. The vast sample trays filled with tiny paper cups of vanilla pudding; the long row of HD-TV screens all showing the same animated movie, which leaped and danced in a garish and precise can-can line; the intriguing contents of other people’s passing carts—it all seemed to exert a strong centrifugal pull on my attention, and the only means of resistance I could discover was to start small quarrels with Veronica. At least, I think that’s the real reason I wouldn’t stop making fun of the oversized tub of maraschino-red licorice twists, which she said she was buying for movie night at the field station.
Exasperated, Veronica finally sent me off to the pharmacy section to restock our first-aid kit. But since I lack any innate sense of direction, I figured my best chance of finding the pharmacy without getting irretrievably lost was to walk transects—the systematic to-and-fro one would trace
