The Badlands Hold Me as I Grieve

Photographs and Text by Rebecca Norris Webb

Ms. Norris Webb’s books include “My Dakota” and “A Difficulty Is a Light.”

I have a kind of game I play with grief, imagining the birds I see are the people I’ve lost.

When my identical twin brothers died unexpectedly — one to heart failure 20 years ago, one to suicide more recently — words deserted me in those first days of grief. I found, though, that if I could get out the door with my camera and into a landscape that called to me, I thankfully could still photograph.

For me, that landscape is South Dakota, where I moved with my father, mother and younger sister when I was 15 years old and where my parents lived for more than 50 years.

My brother Dave is a belted kingfisher (shared quirky fashion sense); his twin, Mike, is a Townsend’s solitaire (complicated yet unforgettable song). Seeing either of these species while out birding in South Dakota makes me smile — that same half-smile of my brothers’ that often accompanied their gently teasing senses of humor.

A year ago, my father died at home weeks shy of his 105th birthday. As much as you might imagine that you’re prepared for a parent’s death, you never really are.

What bird should a father be? In particular, what bird should Dad be, a family doctor of few words who taught me how to look closely at the natural world and who shared my love of raptors, grassland birds and songbirds, especially cedar waxwings.

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