It began with The Feather Quest. I was 12 and exploring the birding section of my local library. I’d recently started identifying the birds that came to my family’s feeders using the two plates in the middle of our Encyclopedia Britannica, and I was fascinated. But it wasn’t until I read Pete Dunne’s Big Year memoir that I really became a birder. In that book I was introduced to the people and places of North American birding, the objects of desire for my savings (I started searching pawn shops for a pair of Zeiss), and the wonder of abundance that makes keeping bird lists an enduring practice. It also had more f-words in print than my young eyes had ever encountered, giving it a sheen of cool, in what seemed a nerdy pursuit.

There is something about the Big Year genre that encapsulates birding in all its joys and contradictions, its community and laments. There have been many great big year books, and Kenn Kaufman’s Kingbird Highway and Mark Obmascik’s The Big Year are two of the classics. Recently those titles have been joined by Noah Strycker’s Birding Without Borders and Arjan Dwarshuis’ The (Big) Year That Flew By—global adventures that gave this mostly state-side birder a sense of the world’s birds and the diverse people who care for their future. Now, a new book has been added to the genre, bringing all the same thrills of discovery and community as those other books but with a fresh infusion of adventure, danger, and personal growth.

Birding Under the Influence: Cycling Across America in Search of Birds and Recovery is, as its title suggests, the story of Dorian Anderson’s 2014 cross country birding adventure on two wheels. And it contains many of the classic elements readers expect from a Big Year recounting—the birds that got away (or almost did), the growing of the list by torrents and trickles, and the people and places that make birding a community rather than just an individual obsession. But Anderson brings in other narrative strains that add so much more to the story, a story that is both a joy to read and fodder for reflection.

We could characterize these narrative strains as Dorian vs. himself, Dorian vs. the road, and Dorian in love. These all intertwine with the birding, but each adds a depth to the story that is not always present in other Big Year narratives. The first, and most clearly prominent of these, is Dorian vs. himself, or perhaps Dorian against his demons. Anderson clearly has an addictive personality and birds were among his first obsessions. Describing his time as a kid at Victor Emanuel’s Camp Chiricahua in Southeast Arizona, Anderson writes that birding “was an addictive blend of observing, collecting and learning, and I saw the endeavor as a never-ending treasure hunt, one that would occupy me well into old age.” From high school on, that obsessiveness turned toward drugs and alcohol, addictions whose story is interwoven with his Big Year travels.

Anderson skillfully links the story of that journey with his past, working from the landscape and experiences along the way, and pivots back and forth as the miles unfold. For example, in one chapter about his ride through the Loup Loup Pass in Washington state, where wildfires had recently raged, he turns from the burned over landscape to the memory of the time the love of his life “burned” him after an addiction-fueled lie. These flashbacks are framed as reveries along the road, and having ridden a few 100-mile days myself, the convention works even if it is at times a bit contrived.

The road presents its own obstacles and opportunities. There is something powerful about moving oneself through the landscape with no energy input other than breakfast. But the romance can quickly fade especially when faced with German shepherds lying in wait along a rural road in Arizona or getting hit by a careless driver in Florida—two among the many roadside hazards Anderson faced. He blends the joys and hardships of a cross-country bike trip, but as the book goes on and his legs grow stronger, the scale seems to tip toward joy. Part of that comes from Anderson’s solution to one of the paradoxes of most Big Years. While chasing birds and enjoying their abundance, the usual Big Year adventure burns a huge amount of greenhouse gases that ultimately harm the very birds we love. The struggle with that reality is a theme in many Big Year memoirs, but Anderson is able to simply enjoy a year of birding with no guilt about how he got there. He does so self-consciously, sometimes reflecting on the role fossil fuels have in the climate crisis, but he never comes off as smug. It’s his journey the way he wanted to do it, nothing more or less.

Going into the book, I knew I was in for a great birding adventure, as well as a narrative of an addict finding freedom, but what I didn’t expect was a love story. Anderson’s relationship with Sonia, from the beginning of the book to the end, is a deeply human tale of forbearance, pain, and redemption. It was love, ultimately, that helped Anderson overcome his harmful behaviors, returned him to birds, and led him to the peace that had so long evaded him.

In the end, the book that has followed Anderson as an addict searching for another fix, be it for beers or birds, concludes with satisfaction. In the final days of his journey, when faced with the choice of adding just a few more species to his list or relaxing into the new year with Sonia, he finally finds peace. “Alone in my motel room,” he writes, “enough was finally enough.”

Alongside The Feather Quest, that got me started, Birding Under the Influence will find a place on my shelf among my favorite birding books. And like Dunne’s book, it has inspired me to new hopes for my birding. I read many of its pages while on my bike trainer, spinning my tires as I turned the pages, and dreaming of my own bike powered birding adventures. A county Big Year? Maybe even a state one? It could happen. And I’m sure others, with greater ambitions and more skill, will also wonder about what else is possible. What would a multi-continent bike Big Year look like, from North America to South America? The possibilities and combinations are endless, and I hope whoever completes them will offer up as rich a story about the journey as Dorian Anderson has done here.