Buoyed by the Lord God Bird

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I opened my Friday's Dallas Morning News and saw the front page headline, "Ivory-billed woodpecker rediscovered". My reaction was a variant of the legendary response of bird-watchers who were lucky enough to sight the ivory-billed; "Oh, God, that's so wonderful!" My heart filled with joy, and my lungs seemed to fill extra full of oxygen. That is how hope feels, like a kite pulling upward on a thermal. Life is good. There's an ivory-billed woodpecker in the swampy woods of Arkansas.

The ivory-billed had been thought extinct for sixty years. A giant with a length of eighteen to twenty inches and a wingspan near three feet, this is not your friendly neighborhood woodpecker. Imagine a woodpecker the size of a crow.

I don't need to get in a kayak and go looking for the Lord God Bird. I wouldn't want to distract it from its business of surviving and spreading hope. I look out on my condo patio every morning to look for ivory-billed woodpeckers, blue morpho butterflies, and komodo dragons.

It hasn't happened so far, but I am elated by the visits from rosy house finches, green anole lizards, and busy spiders. I am encouraged to go seek that most elusive species, the comfortable sandal. Yes, the supportive, breathing, cute sandal for standing up all day teaching. It might have survived somewhere out there in the swampy big woods. It might even be on sale!

By the way, did you ever notice how much Lyle Lovett looks like Woody Woodpecker?

Please enjoy "Found in Arkansas: Hope on Wings" in today's New York Times, and NPR's Radio Expedition on the subject.