By Naomi Klouda
Homer Tribune
Enthusiastic bird viewers often set out with a specific bird in mind — a Bristle-thighed curlew, let’s say, or a solitary sandpiper.
“It’s always interesting to me to hear what a person’s lifetime bird is. A woman told me the other day what she really wants to see is a yellow-billed loon and I was able to tell her, ‘Well, there’s one in the Barge Basin right now,’” said Christina Whiting, coordinator of the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival. “For others it’s the warbler or eider or a sandhill crane.”
Which fits in perfectly with one of the big-name attractions to the festival: Mark Obmascik, the author of “The Big Year” best-selling novel whose book was made into a hilarious, richly layered movie staring Jack Black, Steve Martin and Owen Wilson.
It tells the story of three men who abandon their normal duties to spend a year viewing birds in one of the world’s quirkiest sporting contests. With few rules and no referees, there is one goal: to see and identify the most species of birds in a single year. The three main characters will spend a grueling, exhaustive year traveling hundreds of thousands of miles and spending thousands of dollars — in the end, you can’t lose.
Obmascik was part of a Denver Post team of journalists who won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for a series on the Columbine High School shooting massacre.
He said that during his 18 years with the Denver Post, he alternated during election years covering politics and, in the off years, focused on the environment.
“Our place is like your state — issues aren’t settled yet. There are strong opinions on both sides. I went back and forth between senate, governor, presidential campaigns and the great public land fights,” Obmascik said. “We have the Rocky Mountain arsenal here, the U.S. Army chemical weapons for World War II and (environmental catastrophes) such as the guy who built a gold mine in one of the most inhospitable environments on earth 10,000 feet up a mountain — and sure enough, he screwed up.”
That resulted in a cyanide spill that killed 30 miles of river inhabitants.
Then one year, a different kind of assignment landed on his desk.
“I had finished covering a campaign, another Senate campaign that I knew was going to be ugly. I picked up the phone and it was a call from the American Birding Association — who knew? They were in Colorado Springs,” he said.
A New Jersey industrialist had spent a “Big Year” chasing across the continent after fragile, delicate little birds.
“And I thought, ‘A competitive bird watch? Who could make up such a thing?’ In one year, three guys had spent a year of their lives covering 270,000 miles and spending over $200,000 — including getting to the island of Attu where they awaited these Asiatic birds taking fight into airspace,” he said.
Obmascik got to know the three men — the New Jersey industrialist, a CEO of big companies who had a dream home near Aspen who suffered 40 years with his repressed bird obsession. He was married to a marriage counselor and the first year of their long-awaited retirement, he announces is going to be his Big Year.
The third man was a software technician hunting down Y2K bugs at a nuclear plant in Maryland. His divorce had just finalized and he was teaching himself to live again.
“I had spent a career writing about murders, politicians and rapists. I felt like the luckiest guy around to get to write about these three men, whom I actually liked,” he said.
The movie is more “inspired” by Obmascik’s book. The names are different and the places have changed. Characters’ problems and flaws are altered.
“But the movie is beautiful. The cinematography was great — they actually went to the Yukon and built a replica of Attu where they did the filming,” he said,
Obmascik’s next book, “Halfway to Heaven” (2009), was about 54 mountains, all over 14,000 feet, that he climbed.
“I climbed all of them. The premise was that my body’s best days are over and this could be the crowning achievement of that. I was fat, 44 and in the market for a vasectomy,” he said.
To get ready, he joined a spin class of mostly peri-menopausal women. When he began to slack off, the women prodded him into keeping at it. He reciprocated by adjusting the wall fans for them when hot flashes hit. Then summer came, and off he went chasing his dream to climb all 54 summits.
Two discussions and the movie feature Obmascik. A panel discussion, “The Role of Environmental Journalism in Today’s World,” is from 11a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Friday moderated by History Professor Mike Hawfield, with panelists Nancy Lord and Tom Kizzia.
On Saturday at the Mariner Theatre, Obmascik will give a brief talk introducing “The Big Year” movie from 2:30 to 3 p.m., followed by a book signing.
