process / bird is the word / part 1

Part 1 — Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve

Picture this: It's late 2024 and the Company wants to make AI happen. In fact, the Company has generated inspirational images, one of which has an idyllic bog. Would you be inspired? We were, but probably not the way leadership intended.

We fantasized about visiting a real bog. Bogs became kind of an obsession, especially when 2025 rolled around and it was clear everyone at the Company was swamped instead of being immersed in nature.

It was time for us to touch nutrient-dense mud.

"Bog witch is my dream profession once AI comes for my job." — Rachel

Living in Southern California, bogs are hard to come by. The closest thing we could find was wetlands, specifically the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve. As a bonus it was conveniently located between Los Angeles and San Diego.

anti-wetland
anti-wetland

To prepare for our bog-inspired wetland adventure, we got birding supplies. In an effort to keep things low cost, Sana borrowed a birding kit from the Edendale Library. The birding kit had:

There is something joyful about having a prepared bag of tools. As they say, when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail and buddy when we finally arrived at Bolsa Chica, every bird deserved to be looked at with binoculars.

Of the binoculars brought, the children's binoculars were so bad it looped back around to being good again. At one point, Sana put them up to her phone camera and tried to convince (gaslight, girlboss!) everyone the pictures were coming out great.

They were not.

Rachel asked what was going to be done with the pictures and Sana said she'd make a zine (this is foreshadowing baby). During this serious conversation, we were identifying birds with the confidence of veterans.

We saw terns

We saw egrets

We saw ducks

Then we saw a creature so ridiculous looking it shocked us back into serious mode. What was that diving devil?

At this point, the field guide in the birding kit was only held, not really cracked open because we were confident in our identifications of the other birds. This bird required expert opinions.

Within minutes we discovered what it was, a California Cormorant! And we knew then we were real birders.