Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder
by Julia Zarankin (Douglas & McIntyre, 2020)
Julia Zarankin’s life has not had a predictable flight path. Her journey comes with scraped knees, defeat, tears and a few swear words as she tries to keep pace with the experienced. She’s auditioning a hobby mid-life with jangled confidence and the associated unsurety of it all. Enter birding. How hard could it be?
Zarankin is a “serial enthusiast,” which I can wholly appreciate. She taste-tests one hobby after another, hoping one will snag. She moves from yoga to Pilates, the Slow Food movement, cycling, bookmaking and pottery. She has an epiphany somewhere in the muddled mix: How does one find a way to exercise patience without having to do yoga? Raise your hand if you seek the same magic.
Throughout her illuminating memoir, Zarankin maps out her own migratory route from the Soviet Union to Vancouver to Missouri to Paris, with failed relationships to match each move. She earns a Russian literature degree — surely birds can be easier than that? After navigating a collapsed marriage and total career disappointment,
