When I went to pick up my mail on Friday, someone asked me, “Have you found a place to hide out for the Memorial Day weekend?” Normally, I would be content to find a quiet spot in the sunshine and get through more of my ever-growing reading list, but I had more substantial plans this time around—hence why I can write a column that’s not just me singing the praises of the late, great Alice Wong.

With gas prices these days and warmer weather, it’s pretty easy to convince me to get on my bike to go places. I started my weekend biking down to the Al Tahoe Firewise barbecue, which I said I’d cover for the paper. Reporting can sometimes be a pretty thankless job, but it sweetens the deal if you get some free food… but this time, I also did get a heartfelt thanks from Dianne Rees for attending.

I had to hop back on my bike to tidy up my place though, since I planned to host my sibling and some friends from out of town. These friends of mine are avid birders, and we were on a mission to get some “lifers”: the birder term for the first time you successfully spot and identify a bird.

No matter how you feel about visitors to the region, I think you can still appreciate the awe people have when they see how beautiful Lake Tahoe really is. We took a drive to Cave Rock to sit on the beach, and so our birders could log some birds in Nevada. They all marveled at the blueness of the lake, how you could see straight down into the water on the shore and the beauty of the surrounding mountains.

I kicked off my shoes, rolled up my pants and waded into the water while they watched some Brewer’s blackbirds… and then promptly heard a full-throated scream from my friend who decided to wade in with me.

“It’s freezing! Oh my god, how do you stand this?” he asked, leaping out of the waves the way a gazelle bounds away from a cheetah. I shrugged. Another thing to appreciate about visitors is their unfiltered reaction to the temperature of the water.

The next day, we decided to go on the Upper Truckee River Trail to try and spot some birds. Amid the mountain chickadee cries of cheese-bur-ger!, we’d planned to look for the juniper titmouse, a lifer for my friend who professionally works with birds.

I am a big fan of nature (who isn’t in Tahoe?) and it’s easy to be drawn to flash and spectacle: a massive wildflower bloom in the desert, towering trees on a mountaintop, bison lumbering through wide-open plains. But being with birders like my sibling and friends makes you stop constantly on a trail. You stand and listen for the space of several heartbeats, waiting for a bird to sing again, to hear exactly who’s around you. You wait in the grass, pointing your binoculars up towards a tangle of branches just to see if you can spot a little grey or brown bird that most people wouldn’t pay attention to at all.

We heard one paddler say, “Just once, I wanna see a bear out here,” as he sailed past on the river, where red-winged blackbirds called all around him. And while my friends were also eager for potential bear sightings, I loved that we found our joy in pointing out spotted sandpipers, Western wood pewees and brown-headed cowbirds. Especially in spring, you can see how the forests truly teem with life.

(We didn’t end up seeing any bears, and after a visit to Taylor Creek we learned it’s mating season, so they’re… busy.)

I spent pretty much my entire Saturday and Sunday outdoors with my friends, my binoculars, and my camera. We caught up on how life has been like in the months or years since we last saw each other. Lamented how hard it is to schedule time for friendships when you all have different jobs and live in different time zones. We all talked so much I realized I’d lost a little bit of my voice by Monday.

There’s a joke among my friends that birds can sense if you want to see them too much and will hide. This goes doubly for rarer sightings, where birders will flock (pun intended) to a spot if they hear there’s even a chance they might see their next lifer. “Only the pure of heart can see a bittern or a woodcock,” we laugh.

Despite how common they are, we did not spot a juniper titmouse this time around. But while I’m still here in Tahoe, there definitely will be a next time—and another excuse to get together with my friends and hit the trails.