Winter Birding Motivation Reaches Zero

I've been thinking about a concept lately I'm calling bird watching activation energy. I imagine a scale of numbers from zero energy to maybe 100 with bird avatars for each level on this scale. Perhaps a sleepy owl (Eastern Screech) in the daytime for zero and something like a Black-capped Chickadee at the top of the scale seemingly always moving making noise in every weather type possible. I feel like everything in life affects this activation energy and I would define it simply as the amount of pooled effort/energy needed by a person to get them out bird watching or exploring the outdoors on any given day. Many daily happenings impact this theoretical number or pool of energy and every person has a different value at which they are able to motivate themselves to get out and explore.

In my case I have a pretty low general activation number, meaning that it doesn't take much to get me out the door and birding/hiking. Though that does come with limits as I'm pretty sure I have more than 1 number. I have my general, get out the door number, and I have my travel multiple hours number. Additionally because nothing in life is simple, these numbers all change value based on the time of year, conditions, life circumstance, personal health, etc...

I constantly struggle with being two people in life. I nearly always present myself as either a homebody that would prefer to stay close to home near a base of operation and comfort or as an adventurous spirit that wishes to roam far and wide for hours, even days at a time.

After a long week of work driving the 30 miles each way to the office several days a week my activation pool is often running low for trips, but high for near location efforts. This is why I thrived in 2017 doing a big year in Washington County, MN. With drives limited to 30 minutes or so in any direction it was easy to get out the door even with a low activation energy knowing I wouldn't have some crazy 4 hour drive back home in insane weather.

When it comes to trips though I often have to talk myself into executing my plans every single day until the weekend just to keep myself on that task. When winter is in full swing, with snow on the ground and extreme cold present, my activation energy coming into the weekend can absolutely plummet to the depths of nothingness. This last weekend I had general plans to take Friday off work and execute a 2 day north shore State Park trip. I would hit 8 State Parks in 2 days in a super loop to explore as much as possible in these spaces. As the week got on my Friday went from 1 work meeting and a viable day off to 5 meetings and taking it off was not going to happen. I then shifted to a Saturday/Sunday plan and quickly found that Saturday was going downhill quickly in the way of snow predictions and once I saw 3 to 5 inches forecast in areas I knew I was unlikely to make the trip. (Nothing drops my activation energy faster than snow falling as I hate taking risks on the road, especially when driving distances in unfamiliar areas.) I soon realized the overnight temps were looking to drop back into negative double digits and yet another massive hit to my activation energy occurred. I can often overcome one of the 2 factors, especially in the pursuit of a major goal such as my 2018 State Park Big Year, but even I have my limits.

I quickly found myself desiring a weekend in and relaxing on the couch, watching movies, playing games, and spending time with my wife. So that is what I did, the entire weekend. I have travelled every weekend up to this point since New Years and hiked many miles of trails in tough conditions spanning -16 degrees to roughly 30 degrees. I've had 3 or 4 layers on my legs and 5 on my body while also using snow shoes or Yak Trax, but when enough times come together at once it is not difficult to moth ball the entire set of plans and hunker down like a squirrel waiting out a break in the weather.

My hope is that the relaxing weekend helped recharge my energy reserves and the weather cooperates this coming weekend so I can get out and beastmode the north shore. I envy some people as they appear to have an infinite reserve when it comes to getting out and ignoring or making peace with the winter weather, but I'm just not at that point yet in life. Spending 10 years in central Illinois I was always the guy out longer and more often than those native to the area because it never seemed like winter in IL. We rarely had cold for long stretches and some winters the snow pack was non-existent or melted off after each fresh snowfall.

This long ramble really is in hopes others can identify to some degree with their own activation energy to get out in the long winter months and struggling to make it happen. I plan to focus on myself and listen to what I need. In January I visited 15 State Parks and outstripped the needed pace of visits by greater than 2 to 1 (6 average needed each month) so I definitely made some hay, but it didn't come without a cost. I spent a lot of energy and that coupled with typical deep winter weather had me so unmotivated that I couldn't summon up the desire to swing by even Afton State Park for a visit. My wife summed it up really well when she said of my desire to stay in for the weekend, "That's why it is a big year, not a big month." She was right, I have an entire year to visit all of these parks and find birds. I'm not going to complete the whole year in a single month so I shouldn't be to hard on myself when it is time to take a weekend off when the weather is poor.

I'm looking forward to the warm months. My activation energy barrier is typically very low when it is warm as I will often bird watch every day of the week for a few months straight in spring/summer.