Dear Birdy,

I am forty-nine year old man. I was married for sixteen years, have been divorced for ten, and have two children. They are grown now, one finishing college this spring and the other living on the east coast, just getting started in her young career. I have dated a little since my divorce, but haven’t had any luck finding a partner who I really connect with. My friends say I’m too picky, but I know what works for me. Ideally, I’d love a partner who’s my age or slightly younger. Someone who has been successful enough in her career that she can retire at a younger age, like I plan to do soon. I imagine a future with lots of travel and very few restrictions. I’m not looking for a “perfect” woman, but physical attraction is important to me. My favorite ways to stay active are skiing and mountain biking, and I’d love to share those with my partner. Someone who doesn’t have children would be ideal, so we don’t have to worry too much about providing for additional kids besides my own. I know the right person is out there. Are my friends right? Am I being too picky? Or should I hold out hope that I will find “The One”?

Sincerely,

Lonely Old Dad

Dear Lonely Old Dad,

Let me get this straight. You’re looking for a beautiful partner who’s forty-nine or within a few (lesser) years, has created enough financial success for herself in our 83 cents on the dollar world that she can retire soon and have the resources to travel the world freely. A woman who is free from the financial burden of her own children but is willing to take on the financial burden of yours, who skis in winter and mountain bikes in summer. Thank goodness she doesn’t have to be perfect.

In your many travels, have you visited the Driftless area? It’s a tucked away little corner of the Midwest, extending into southwest Wisconsin, southeast Minnesota, northeast Iowa, and northwest Illinois. I know when I name those states you don’t think of mountains or any interesting topography really, but you’d be wise to think again. It’s called the Driftless because the landscape was untouched by the glacial drift that softened most of the region into the rolling farmland most of us picture when we imagine the upper Midwest. The absence of the slow-moving handiwork of ancient glaciers means this area is characterized by tall limestone bluffs, steep hillsides forested with red oak, white pine, paper birch, and some dreamy morel habitat, as well as some other unusual biological communities. One of these is the algific talus slope.

Algific talus slopes are exceptionally rare, the global range existing only in the Driftless region. They typically have northern or eastern exposures, protected from the heat of direct sunlight. The word algific comes from the Latin roots algus, meaning cold, and facere, to make. In some areas, cracks in the bedrock allow water to seep in. A layer of impermeable shale rests shallowly beneath the surface, trapping the water, which then becomes ice in the long, harsh winters. Spring arrives, as it always does, and the perfect combination of ice and open space and underground corridors create cool air vents along these slopes, like tiny little a/c units,. The talus slopes are made cold by this unusual geologic process, a relic from pre-glacial times.

In the often unrelenting heat and humidity of Midwestern summers, these in-ground a/c units continue to pump out cool air, the slowly melting ice kept cold by the insulating earth, the favorable exposure, and the dense canopy, creating rare microhabitats on this already rare terrain. There is a wildflower, a subspecies of northern monkshood, who thrives only here. She is a rare and beautiful thing. She is, dare I say, perfect. She keeps her purple hood drawn tight and revels in the cool breeze created just for her. Remove the monkshood from her microhabitat, however, and she will wilt and die. Monkshood is a federally threatened species, but you could have guessed that. Conditions so specific to survival, what chance does she have?

You, Lonely Old Dad, are looking for a northern monkshood who makes her home on a rare, naturally air-conditioned bluffside slope found only in a small region of one country in this great big world. You, too, have created conditions so specific to your happiness, what chance do you have? The northern monkshood does exist. As do fields and hillsides and freeway ditches full of soft, silky, perfect wildflowers. Should we not pause to appreciate them all? To recognize their beauty does not rest in the ways in which they are what we expect them to be, but instead, in the way this one reaches a little higher to capture the sunlight on her broad leaves, even though it makes her stem wobble, and the way that one’s bruised petals fold into herself more awkwardly than her neighbor blossom? Maybe there are no conditions for perfection other than their short and fearless existence. Perhaps, when we notice their surprising and particular perfections, we might even fall in love.

Love,
Birdy