Blue Mountain Audubon Memories
Shirley Muse is a testament to the belief that gentle persons can make a mighty difference. What would BMAS be without her? And, in fact, what would Walla Walla be without her ever vigilant protection of our natural environment?
Besides her involvement in BMAS (where she's held every office at least once and continues, after years, to put out the newsletter) Shirley has served on several other local environmental organizations since moving to Walla Walla almost 40 years ago. She was active in the days of the Spotted Owl controversy as a member of the Blue Mountain Natural Resources Institute. Since then, she has served as an advisor to BLM and the National Forest Service, participated in monitoring Growth Management in the county, and, along with Mike Denny, represented BMAS as advisor to Florida Power concerning the impact of their wind farms on migrating and native birds.
Currently Shirley, known in town as The Tree Lady, is a vital member of the Urban Forestry Commission, an essential group that works to protect the many grand trees in the city and encourage the proper planting of new trees. And she's also a part of the local, recently created Grandmothers' Round Table.
Shirley has indeed accomplished mighty things, and done them with knowledge, patience, and calm persistence. Where in a person's history and character does this kind of commitment come from?
In May of 2005 I spent a quiet morning with Shirley. We had a lively talk about her life, and she revealed the source of her dedicated work for birds, their environment, and the people who love them.
BMAS: Shirley, how did you happen to come to live in Walla Walla?
Shirley: Corey, my husband, and I wanted to move from Utah to the Northwest, and in the summer of 1966 he took a position at Whitman College. We liked it from the start. It fit like a soft glove.
BMAS: Was Utah your childhood home?
Shirley: Yes, I graduated from high school in Spanish Fork, Utah, but I was born on the edge of the Red Rock Country, out in the desert. My grandparents colonized that area. My great-great grandmother on my mother's side walked across the plains with a child and pushing a hand cart. My father's people were early Mormon converts from Iowa and his family is traced back to one of the later Mayflower sailings.
BMAS: That's an impressive heritage. But I'll bet you're not bound very tightly by your family tradition and are something of a free thinker.
Shirley: Nature, the environment, is my spirituality. I grew up in the environment of the desert. My father would bring in little wild animals that got washed out of their home by irrigation and we'd make pets out of them. I've loved animals from my earliest memories on the farm. We had a small house, but when it snowed I wanted the cows and pigs and horses to come in the house, because if I was cold in the snow, they must be. I just had an affinity for wildlife very early. My school was out in the country. The first grade was in a tiny room with 4 desks--there were 4 of us--and I had a wonderful teacher. She planted the seed in me. We were surrounded by the desert and the out-of-doors was our classroom to a certain extent. We'd go out for walks and learn about the plants, horned toads, and the lizards, snakes, and calls of the song birds.
BMAS: So do you think you got an interest in birds and identifying birds at that time?
Shirley: Just wildlife in general. I learned that these creatures were out there.
BMAS: At what time did you develop a special interest in birds?
Shirley: In the summer of 1969 we took our first trip to Alaska. Cory was teaching at a university in Anchorage. We flew up with the children, so couldn't travel around, but we all loved Alaska and were interested in the wildlife where we lived. I just fell in love with the north country. So the next summer we bought our VW van and drove there, camping on the way. It took 8 days to reach Anchorage on 1300 miles of gravel! Then in the summer of 1971 our friend, Jim Todd, came up and stayed with us. He came to see certain birds. I thought, my gosh, that's kind of weird to come this far just to see birds! We'd drive around and he'd get excited and say, "Oh stop, stop, stop!" because he thought he saw a shorebird or something. So when he left after visiting, he gave us a Golden Bird Guide as a thank you gift.
BMAS: Sounds like you were primed to become a birder.
Shirley: Well that fall there was an introductory meeting to form an Audubon chapter in Walla Walla. My son, Jeff, and I attended, and right after we signed in, it was announced that enough people had signed in to qualify.
BMAS So you put them over the top!
Shirley: Yes, Jeff and I thought that was pretty cool. So that's how we started.
BMAS You must have just dived in there. Even though that was the same year you had your first bird guide and weren't that knowledgeable about birds, you still wanted to be a part of this group. I think that's amazing!
Shirley: Yes, I was hooked on watching birds. And watching them in an organized way. We had always had a binoculars in our van, but we never focused on this or that little bird.
BMAS: So you've been interested in not just experiencing the birds, but actually learning about them and becoming a knowledgeable viewer.
Shirley: Yes, certainly since that time. One of the great privileges of my life was going to the Pribilof Islands with Art Rempel in '74. It was really wonderful. We were up in Alaska in the summer again and Cory was teaching. Art and Lucile drove up and they stayed with us. The Pribilof Islands are very remote; it took us two tries to get there because of the weather. The first time we had that long flight out and long flight back, because we couldn't land. The next week we tried again and spent 4 days on the island. Art had a former student who was working for Fish and Wildlife there, so we got to go to the seal rookeries that the tourist don't go to, and we watched the harvest of the males. Some of the rookeries are huge, massive--thousands--bawling, mooing, yelling, fighting, killing. I didn't like it but I took it in stride because that's life. But the birds are amazing out there.
BMAS: So there are birds right there with the seals?
Shirley: Yes, there are bird rookeries around there and you see millions of sea birds. But then the small land birds are there too. The day we left, it was interesting. There was an Audubon tour from New York. These people were what I call "crazy birders." They'll go anywhere and pay anything to find a new bird. And that morning we were waiting; we weren't sure we'd get off that morning because it was foggy and if the plane came and we couldn't see it, it would be another week before we'd get off the island. We were standing around and someone calls out that there is a Steller's Eider out in the bay. So everybody grabs their scopes and hustles out to the bay--Art and I did--and I was standing there and they said, "It's over there!" Way across the bay. It was dark and rainy, you couldn't see colors well, and all these people were, "Yeah, yeah, I see it! I see it! It was a female Eider, way across the bay, in a storm. And I looked at Art and said, "What do you think, Art?" He said, "I'm not going to list it." So I never listed it either. He taught me a good lesson that day. Unless it's 'a print', like a photographic print, you shouldn't list it.
BMAS: That was a big moment for you. Do you remember a time when you discovered some bird on your own--when you weren't with a group?
Shirley: I've had the usual learning errors. Well, one summer we went down to Lake Powell. While the men were fishing, I was with the young children and we had my brother's air conditioned truck. It was too darn hot in the daytime and I would go riding around the countryside looking at the red rocks with Scott and Dirk. We went up into the Henry Mountains, three major peaks in the middle of the Red Rock Country. They're unique mountains with aspen, pine-covered at the top. I went up there because my father was born in Hanksville, just north of those mountains, and every summer he and his brothers were sent up into those mountains with cattle. So I went up into the mountains and was sitting there looking, and saw a Red-headed Woodpecker. It was sitting on a stunted tree. Unmistakable! I've gone back to books--I've gone back to that memory; I was just so convinced, that I've kept that record. And then the Alaskan birding has been just wonderful. We've driven up on the same road 16 times and every time seen a pair of Red-throated Loons nesting on the same pond, almost in the same spot. For 8 summers we served as camp hosts at Chilkat State Park. It was great. We didn't have to be there for 24 hours of the day. We could put up a sign that we'd be back and go up and look for bears and birds, wolves, whatever we could find on top.
BMAS: You didn't worry about bears?
Shirley: We never did. We had a lot of close encounters. One time when Priscilla was with us, we were up north of the Arctic Circle. We knew we were in bear country. Priscilla had pitched her tent right behind our van. She did it every night. She was pretty brave, she really was. As we were outside preparing for bed, Cory pointed to a huge golden grizzly up on the bank, staring and sniffing in the late sun. That late sun shining on him! He was the most gorgeous bear we've ever seen. I hurried pretty quickly, and Priscilla decided she wouldn't sleep outside that night. She shared my bunk in the van with me.
BMAS: I'm glad to hear she was wise as well as brave! Besides Utah, Walla Walla and Alaska, where else have you lived?
Shirley: We spent almost 3 years in the South Pacific teaching in a church school. We adopted a Samoan--actually we invited him to come and live with us so he could attend school. He said, "I'll have to ask my father." He went back to his village, and when he came back, he said his father had agreed and said to us, "now you are his parents." He's wonderful. He lives here in the States now and has raised his own family. So we're his parents! We went back to Samoa later to photograph 57 species for a new bird guide. By that time I was into bird watching--we had the Audubon chapter--and I would try to find books on the birds there, but they were few and far between. I found a few pamphlets in the library. There was one old book written in the '40s. So that's what we went down armed with. It was a fun experience. Dirk, our youngest, learned to drive the little car we rented, and he'd drive behind as we walked the island and looked and listened for birds. National Audubon put the money up front for us and we had 3500 printed in 1982. We probably have about 250 left.
BMAS: Is that book used now?
Shirley: It is.
BMAS: What's the name of it?
Shirley: Birds and Bird Lore of Samoa. Our adopted son started to tell us about the legends of certain birds. "Oh, that bird tells you it's going to rain. If you hear that bird calling up in a tree, you know a rain storm is coming." Well, rain storms come all the time. But it was fun. So we decided to blend the legends with the birds. We researched the legends in old manuscripts, recorded way back in the 1800s.
BMAS: Did you include all the 57 species in your book?
Shirley: We included with photos or drawings all of them. Some are migrants. The Bar-tailed Godwit, the Bristle-thighed Curlew, American Golden-Plover, Wondering Tattler. North American shorebirds that find their way to the Southern Hemisphere. These are birds that can't land on water. The Golden-Plover has been clocked at 17 hours from the Aleutian Islands to Hawaii without stopping. I don't know how they do it! I don't know how they do it….
by Melissa Webster, October 2005