photograph by alex greene
Editor’s Note: Nestled through the Memphis urban area are surprisingly tranquil green oases. If you’re ready for a break from the hustle for a spell, you don't need to travel far. From an otherworldly paddling voyage to the centering rhythm of a day on the trail, our hometown offers a wealth of opportunities to change your outlook — literally.
Craving a getaway from the city, I set out for one of the area’s richest hiking destinations: Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park, just outside of Millington. And, hoping to elevate my experience beyond a simple walk in the woods, I resolved to become a bird-watcher right then and there. The ranger at the visitor’s center made it easy for me.
“You should check out the Memphis chapter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society,” she chimed in. “They have meetings every third Wednesday of the month. They’re a really nice group of people. Every year, around the middle of December, they do a bird count, which they’ve been doing since the 1800s. We have two seasonal rangers that are starting the first of May, so they’ll be doing all kinds of activities too. We also have a butterfly count they do here.”
photograph by alex greene
One of the many woodland creatures that call Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park home.
Learning that Ryan Pudwell would be leading birders down the park’s Pioneer Springs Trail on July 2nd, I resolved to come back then. But for my April visit, I would rely on the app known as Merlin.
Although it’s called bird “watching,” Merlin, which identifies birds by their call as well as their image, can, if needed, cut the visual dimension out completely. As soon as I’d parked at the head of the Woodland Trail, a three-mile loop over undulating forest terrain (with some challenging uphill sections for your cardio), Merlin was identifying birdsongs, opening up an invisible world to me.
Typically on a hike, I would appreciate the general avian clamor above, but this time was different. Suddenly, each chirp and chatter had a specific performer. “Ah, so that’s a cardinal’s song,” I thought for each species identified, as unseen feathered divas, from red-bellied woodpeckers to Carolina chickadees to white-breasted nuthatches, broadcast their oratorios.
It should be noted, of course, that some more serious birders find Merlin sometimes errs in identifications, and consider it bad form to add a species to your “life list” simply because it was identified by the app. Still, in all my naive ignorance, I was happy to learn a thing or two while I decompressed from city life, and comparing the recorded sounds with archived birdsongs in the app seemed to verify what it was telling me.
Meanwhile, though the dense weave of sun-dappled greenery and deadfall made spotting birds nigh impossible except as blurs flitting past, I could take in more miniature views of the forest, including toads, flowers, and those ever-present “leaves of three.” They were an important reminder that, while indulging in a staycation, it’s not about the life lists we complete by day’s end, but the poison ivy we avoid along the way.
