My Summer with Ospreys: A Therapist’s Journey Toward Hope, Community, and Healing Our Planet, by Pamela Lowell

Stillwater River Publications, 2024

246 pages, paperback

 

My Summer with Ospreys: A Therapist’s Journey Toward Hope, Community, and Healing Our Planet is a chronicle of Pamela Lowell’s time volunteering with Massachusetts Audubon’s South Coast Osprey Project in the summer of 2023. The book is richly illustrated with Lowell’s watercolor sketches. The author, a practicing trauma therapist and birder, believes the Osprey’s journey from severely declining to remarkable resurgence holds valuable lessons for humankind.

After some woodlands near their home along the Assonet River are destroyed to build a parking lot, Lowell and her husband decide to move to the New Bedford, Massachusetts, area. Missing the river birds she would normally see at her former home, Lowell, an experienced kayaker, ventures onto the Westport River, where she discovers dozens of nesting Ospreys. The birds rekindle her artistic passions, inspiring her to create watercolors of Ospreys at their nest platforms. Much to her surprise, her art begins to sell and becomes her portal to the South Coast Osprey Project.

In “Chaucer-esque” fashion, Lowell skillfully uses her Osprey summer as a framing device to introduce the people she meets along the way, such as Matt, the young man “with good balance” who first takes Lowell out in a skiff aptly named Lucky Me to check for eggs in Osprey nests, Gina Purtell, “The Osprey Lady,” and no nonsense Osprey project manager, Dr. Alan Poole, “Osprey Expert,” and a host of other friends and volunteers. Lowell’s conversational tone is often funny, self-deprecating and relatable. She has a fear of heights, which I can relate to, yet triumphantly manages to climb the rickety ladder up to Osprey nests. Later in the summer, while assisting with banding Osprey chicks, Lowell’s shoe becomes stuck in the muck, jolting her backward into the river, butt-first. This reminded me of one of my own banding experiences when, boots firmly lodged in mire, I executed an embarrassing face plant. Fellow volunteers noted I was now officially baptized.

Lowell punctuates her book chapters with fascinating facts about Osprey biology and conservation, rarely missing an opportunity to find some connection between Osprey and humans, especially in those who have experienced trauma. Having suffered major depression since my teen years, I appreciated how Lowell foregrounded her patient encounters, including her own personal work with a therapist. Such openness helps to lessen the stigma surrounding mental illness.

Lowell is at her best when describing the wondrous Ospreys and their habitat. Her child-like awe of these creatures is refreshing. “I don’t want to miss any of this wild and incredible life. I can’t believe how lucky I am to be a part of it all,” she exclaims in one chapter. Her gimlet-artist eye for detail transports the reader to the salt marshes of the Northeast, home to diverse species of animals including the critically endangered Saltmarsh Sparrow. The heartbreaking drowning death of an Osprey after becoming entangled in fishing line brings home the cruel lesson that death always lurks in the river for these birds, often due to human activity.

Lowell is less surefooted when dealing with the topic of race. Lowell, who is white, appears self-conscious when recounting a faux pas involving sunscreen during a kayak date with two Black friends. Lowell pointedly notes her friends call her “sister.” More troubling to me is when Lowell asks Gina Purtell why Massachusetts Audubon has not followed suit with other Audubon organizations in divesting itself of the Audubon name. Purtell’s response, that doing so would divert from precious resources, is specious at best, especially considering Massachusetts Audubon is one of the oldest, largest, and wealthiest nature-based conservation organizations in the country. Yet Lowell allows this excuse to stand without interrogation.

At one point in the book, Lowell laments to a friend that attempting to write a book connecting Ospreys to therapy, life, art, and community may be a bit too much. And indeed, that’s a tall order for even the most talented author, but Lowell largely succeeds at this by giving us a heartfelt and intensely human accounting of herself, the Ospreys, and the communities in their orbit, reminding us that whatever our

individual journey may be, whether physical, mental, or spiritual, “It helps to have someone hold the ladder.”

April D. Campbell, MD grew up in rural Connecticut surrounded by wildness. Her love of birds was inspired by the whirling Barn Swallows that nested in her family's heritage barn. Upon retirement, Dr. Campbell founded BIPOC Birders of Michigan, an organization devoted to introducing marginalized communities to the joys of nature. She currently resides in Ann Arbor with her wife, three cats, and a very stubborn dachshund