The THERAPEUTIC POWER of BIRDWATCHING

The air felt heavy and damp, as if painted onto my skin with a large, wet brush. Predictably, in the mid-day heat of the Neotropics, the forest was mostly still. Only the leaf-cutter ants continued their march unfazed — their jaws laden with crookedly cut leaves as they walked in single file at my feet. Overhead, an almost imperceptible breeze murmured through the rainforest canopy, too far above my head to provide me with any relief. But, in truth, I was used to the heat, and in that moment, my attention was elsewhere. I was focused on the only other movement I could detect — a soft rustling coming from deep in the forest — the unmistakable rhythm of a bird tossing the dry leaves that carpeted the forest floor in search of insects.

If this had been a “normal” day, I would already have had my binoculars at the ready. I would have been crouching, squatting, standing on tiptoes, twisting my body like a contortionist to try to get a glimpse of the bird through the thick understory vegetation. On a normal day, I would have felt anxious to see it, to identify it. But this was not an ordinary day for me. That morning, on top of a particularly stressful few months, I had received some difficult news. So, when