I know I’ve beaten this dead horse into cheval carpaccio already, but oblige me this one last time.
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• My dad was born in Chicago on October 21st, 1919.
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• 2,100 miles to the west, California Condors still ruled the skies over Morgan Territory, an isolated wilderness on the eastern flanks of Mount Diablo, about 30 miles east of San Francisco.
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• The Condor extinction accelerated with human encroachment. The last Condor was documented near Mount Diablo in 1922. My dad was 3 years old at the time, still in Chicago.
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• After World War II, my parents settled in Danville, a small town of 3,000 at the foot of Mount Diablo.
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• My dad was a naturalist, a lifelong birder, and President of the Save Mount Diablo Foundation.
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• On two occasions (that I’m aware of, possibly more), he took time off work to drive the 350 miles to the Santa Barbara Mountains, their last natural habitat, just to see a California Condor in the wild… unsuccessfully.
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• 1975: He and another gentleman fought real estate developers to have Morgan Territory turned into a regional preserve—off limits forever from development… successfully.
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• June 2020: My mother died at age 97.
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• March 2023: My father died at age 103.
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• September 2023: my brother and I flew down and scattered our parent’s ashes at Morgan Territory.
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• Also 👉🏼on that day👈🏼 in September 2023: a flock of California Condors was spotted patrolling the eastern slopes of Mount Diablo and Morgan Territory.
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• One hundred years had passed between California Condor sightings in Morgan Territory. That’s 36,524 days (and 6 hours). Yet on that day. On THAT VERY DAY last September, for whatever reason, they decided to return.
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No, I’m not assigning any woo-woo supernatural meaning to it, or implying the Condors somehow knew who he was and what he did, or that they sensed his “spirit.” That’s pure hokum. But the serendipity of it all is just mind-boggling.
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I’m no mathematician, but I’d calculate the odds of that happening at 36,524.25:1 🤨
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