Accumulating a Fortune

True wealth has far less to do with money than joy and gratitude.

(Listen to the radio version here.)

I feel amazingly and joyfully wealthy. Imagine me suddenly being able to start a sentence with, “Those Cuban Todies I saw on my second trip to Cuba…”

… or “That three days I was on a boat in the Dry Tortugas…” or, now, “When I was in Guyana…”!!!

I went into that trip thinking if I was lucky, I might see close to 100 lifers, and figured 80 would be more realistic. Well, I was VERY lucky—I came home with 114! Noah Strycker himself, who in 2015 set the world record for the most species seen in a single year—6,042—visiting 41 countries and all 7 continents, got over 40 lifers on this trip—more than he’s ever had on a single trip since his amazing Big Year. Getting to bird with him and other wonderful people as well as seeing all these amazing birds—yep—I came home filled with gratitude and feeling VERY wealthy.

When I got invited on this tour out of the blue, the goals I set were pretty bold. As far as lifers, I badly wanted to see a Rufous Crab Hawk, a Jabiru stork, and a Guianan Cock-of-the-rock. I got all three…

… along with the beautiful, critically endangered Sun Parakeet!

I wanted to get at least a few good photos of Hoatzins and ended up with dozens.

And I yearned to get a glimpse at a Giant Anteater—a mammal I’ve been fixated on since I read the A-volume of our family’s encyclopedia as a little girl. I was satisfied when we got a distant look in the twilight early one morning, but then WHOA—a few days later, we saw one rooting about for food close to the road at midday.

When I turned on my computer after I got home on Sunday, all these recent experiences flooding my mind and heart, my computer’s wallpaper showed a stunning White Tern I’d photographed in Hawaiʻi last year on the trip Russ and I made just two months after my mastectomy.

At the moment I took that photo, I was thrilled to be alive at all, much less seeing so many stunning birds in such a faraway place!

And then, while I was getting organized to start downloading photos to my computer, my screensaver kicked in. It’s set to randomly show pictures from a folder I call "Best Photos" which, at this very moment, has 3,510 photos before I’ve even added any from the Dry Tortugas or Guyana. The first photo to randomly pop up was of the ʻIʻiwi Russ and I saw together after that same Hawaiʻi birding tour was over and we were enjoying a last few days on our own before heading home.

Then up popped a photo from 2015, of the chickadee who’d had a deformed bill and was missing the three front toes on one foot. The elongated bill-tips broke off when the winter was over, but his toe loss was permanent. This picture wasn’t from the winter I hand-fed him live mealworms whenever he looked into my office window—it was taken more than a year later, when he successfully raised a nestful of babies who were about to fledge. How grateful and rich I felt remembering the lovely moment when I found out he had not just survived that difficult winter but was thriving!

But even as I savored that photo, up popped another one—my screensaver is set to display each photo for five seconds. There was one of the Bristle-thighed Curlew Russ and I saw in Nome in 2022…

… then one of a Magnolia Warbler I photographed when my son Tom and I were working on a Breeding Bird Atlas spot north of Duluth…

… a fluffy Piping Plover chick nestled against one parent that I photographed with my friend Laurie Gilman in Maine…

… and then a closeup of a Sandhill Crane I saw near Brinson Park in Kissimmee, Florida, with Russ and my son Joe…

then one of BB, my banded Pileated Woodpecker, feeding a fledgling.

Then some pigeons sitting in my box elder…

… a Gray Crowned-Crane in Uganda…

… and then one that wasn’t my own shot—it was a photo my son-in-law took of me and baby Walter looking out my office window at a chickadee.

I think wealth is having everything you truly need—a safe place you can call home and enough money to keep yourself and your family healthy and happy—with enough extra to accumulate experiences, big and little, at home and away, that you can savor forever.

The one and only time I ever visited a financial planner, he offhandedly remarked that spending money on travel was a complete waste—what do you have to show for all the money you blew on a trip except for a few cheap souvenirs? He said the point of having money beyond your basic needs was to invest it to accumulate more wealth.

But that need to accumulate more and more is precisely the route to dissatisfaction. The rich man isn't the one who has the most; he is the one who wants the least. The truly rich take joy and satisfaction with what we already have, sharing our lives, experiences, and what money we have managed to accumulate because sharing is joyful, not a clever means to a tax break. What good is a fortune if the point is just to make it ever bigger?

So I’m looking at my screen saver—a beautiful barnyard rooster just popped up..

and now a Winter Wren singing away.

I picked up Covid on my way home from Guyana (seriously, people, wear a mask! This was the one travel day I forgot!), so I’m feeling sick right now, yet very, very fortune-ate indeed.