On Being with Christa Tippett is supported in part by the John Templeton Foundation,

funding research and catalyzing conversations that inspire people with awe and wonder.

Learn about the latest discoveries in the science of hope and optimism,

forgiveness and free will at templeton.org.

The ornithologist, Drew Lanham, is lyrical in the languages of science and of humans and of birds.

He's a professor of wildlife, ecology, a naturalist, a self-described hunter-slash conservationist.

And he's a most beautiful writer of poetry and author of the celebrated book, The Home Place,

memoirs of a colored man's love affair with nature. His way of seeing and hearing and noticing

the present and the history that birds traverse through our backyards and beyond

is a revelatory way to be present to the world and to life in our time.

In that moment of that little brown bird that's always so inquisitive that sings reliably,

in that moment that I'm thinking about that ran, I'm not thinking about anything else.

That's a joy. And so sometimes I think we have to recognize the joy that the world didn't give us

and that the world can't take away in the midst of the world taking away what it can.

I'm Christa Tippett and this is on being.

Drew Lanham has always been in his words an edge creature. First of all, by growing up between

the homes of his parents and his grandmother, who he called Mammatha, a quarter mile in distance,

but worlds apart in Edgefield County, South Carolina. Today, Drew Lanham lives in

Seneca, South Carolina and is a professor at Clemson University. I brought his voice and perspective

north to be part of the 2021 Great Northern Festival in on being's hometown of the Twin Cities.

But we recorded from our respective homes during pandemic lockdown.

Well, here we are. Is it true that you're in a writing shed?

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