New Frontiers in Aging

Meeting other Ageless Minds

                                            Wisconsin Master Naturalists at Play

Most days I live in two worlds. They are called Real Life and Second Life. Both are misnomers. Real Life is the physical  world; Second Life is a virtual environment that is just as real, emotionally, as so-called “real” life.  In both worlds I have regular opportunities to meet people who show me, by their example, how it’s possible to develop a richer, more expansive mind as I grow older.

While these two worlds can appear to belong to separate universes, I keep discovering how easy it is to cross the space between them with the help of human bridges. In the virtual world of Second Life, for example, I have many friends who live far away from me, whose cultures and backgrounds and physical ages are very different from mine. What powerfully connects us is a  mutual desire to develop very real relationships with each other, even though we start out as strangers and may never see each other in the flesh. In fact, when I ask Second Lifers what they like most about being in a virtual world, they tell me, “It’s the people I can meet here.” 

These friendships don’t go in just one direction. My friends in Second Life have introduced me to their friends outside of our virtual world. For example, my Second Life friend Phil has a deep love of Nature. In earlier Substack posts we’ve shared some of his suggestions for cultivating an ageless mind by spending time outdoors. When he retired, Phil decided to become even more proactive about pursuing that love by becoming a Texas Master Naturalist. I had never heard of the Master Naturalist program until Phil introduced me to it. I now know it’s available in most states in the U.S. This personal story by a young Master Naturalist in Texas gives you a sense of the satisfaction it offers people of all ages and levels of experience. There is truly something for everyone in this kind of training.

I was intrigued and wanted to learn more, so Phil suggested that I speak with his friend Katherine, who is also a Texas Master Naturalist and proactive ager. Katherine has never been, and probably never will be, a resident of a virtual world…although, you never know. I certainly would not have met her if Phil hadn’t built the bridge I crossed to reach her.

Katherine is a retired judge in her early seventies. She has long been dedicated to protecting the environment for her community, especially now through water-monitoring of the nearby Perdenales River which is threatened by over development in the area. As we talked more about how she spends her days, I discovered that she is also an avid “birder.”

In the past few years, I’ve developed a totally amateur appreciation of birds. I take my daily walk around our neighborhood with my phone held up like an antenna, listening for bird calls for the Merlin app. We have put up a bird feeder near our patio door for maximum viewing, which I have mixed feelings about since it attracts a gorgeous Red-Shouldered Hawk (at least I think that’s what it is), who grabs an occasional meal there.  And we’ve taken to making a yearly family visit to the Cornell Ornithology Lab and the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge in upstate New York at the behest of my sister in law, who has long been a passionate birder.  

When Katherine shared the origin story of her history as a birder, I felt a shiver of recognition: I was in the presence of an ageless mind. As she looks back now, she told me, bird watching was a way she channeled her grief over the sudden death of a friend who was hit by a car while biking, perhaps because it engaged all her senses in something other than pain. Ultimately this led to a thirst for deeper knowledge about the birds she was observing, which added to her enjoyment. An unexpected benefit was that this naturally led to her meeting new people with a common interest when she joined local birding groups as well as E-Birders online.  And so her world has grown and grown.

Now, she said, her own backyard and sky have become more satisfying sources of delight and learning than travel to distant lands would be. Reflecting on her earlier grief, she added, “Those kinds of experiences can lead you to places you might not otherwise have gone.”  To her happy surprise, birding was only the first step on the path to other new interests: she now belongs to the “Native Plants Society” and has become fascinated by butterflies. She laughed: “Dragonflies may be next. Birding was just an entry-level drug!” 

Our phone conversation stayed with me. It set off a spark of excitement that spread into an unconscious search for something that would be my entry-level drug. Without planning it, when we made our yearly visit to the Cornell Lab and Montezuma Refuge I found myself uncharacteristically chatting with the older volunteers at length, and in a very personal way. The man who sat at the desk in the Cornell Lab gift shop turned out to be a retired professor. He told me he and his wife have deliberately chosen to remain in the area because they enjoy volunteering at the Lab so much. From the shop they can see the bird feeders just outside the floor-length windows. They learn more about their feathered visitors with every season, using the Lab’s up-to-the-minute technology. He went to a bookshelf and pulled out this book, Ornitherapy: for your Mind, Body, Soul. “You might like this,” he said kindly. “I own it.” It’s a beautiful book, with gorgeous photos, inspiring quotes, and pages where you are encouraged to add your own thoughts. Of course I bought it; it’s perfect for bedtime reading.

At Montezuma, the woman behind the information desk told me that she and her husband are former business people who sold their home to go out on the road in an RV. They spend weeks or even months at various wildlife refuges around the country, where they contribute to conservation efforts while they also get to watch migrations up close. The eyes of both volunteers lit up as we talked and talked. I think you can tell how much I also enjoyed our conversations. I don’t normally ask personal questions of strangers, but that one phone call with Katherine somehow lowered my inhibitions and pushed me outside my usual comfort zone. It was liberating to do something out of character and get a warm, open response. And look what I learned about other people’s lives and minds!

I will probably never become as serious a birder as these folks, but I feel a kinship with them that makes my eyes light up too. So I want to thank Second Life for creating a world where I can meet someone like Phil and, through him, someone like Katherine. Bridges connect places that are separate. Without them, we’d stand on one side of a gap looking longingly at the other side, wondering where the roads over there lead to. So it makes sense to build bridges wherever we find gaps, doesn’t it?

I am curious about you. What are your experiences of building and crossing bridges to explore new frontiers as you are growing older?  Please share here, because we’re all in this thing called “aging” together.

Copyright 2024 by Lynne Berrett and the Ageless Mind Project. All Rights Reserved.

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