Before dawn in Forest Park, John Deshler is listening for a sound most of us would never notice; a pygmy owl calling somewhere high in the trees. It’s a long way from where John started. “I came to Oregon to work at PGE as a software contractor,” he says. “But I was just sick of doing software development and wanted to do something more interesting and fun and maybe more impactful.” That decision led him to Portland State University, avian biology, and a life rooted in the study of owls.
Deshler didn’t just set out to study birds — he set out to build “a lifestyle in sync with my interests that would hopefully get me outside.” What he found was a world of intensity and fragility. “There’s a lot of life and death drama — they’re killing things, and things are trying to kill them.”
His years of observation became the foundation for his book, “The Pygmy-Owls of Forest Park.” Early on, he knew he didn’t want a conventional scientific text. “I didn’t want to do it as a nonfictional narrative,” he says, instead shaping what he calls “creative nonfiction” — a blend of science and storytelling that conveys both ecological truth and lived experience.
“I tried very hard to tell a truthful tale about the drama that unfolds out there,” Deshler explains. While the book reads like a story, it remains grounded in careful observation. He avoided projecting human emotion onto the owls, focusing instead on what he could truly document, such as “their vocalizations if they were agitated.” Still, the emotional weight of the forest comes through. “The moments that were more emotional for me tended to be the ones associated with loss.”
Years in the field have shaped Deshler’s perspective on life. “What all life forms are really concerned about is raising offspring, which is, in a sense, the truest, most basic meaning of life.” Watching wildlife, he says, strips life’s meaning down to its essentials.
Closer to home, he still finds wonder in Wilshire Park, where Cooper’s hawks “create a lot of drama. They make all the birds nervous.”
Deshler’s book offers “an intimate look at the real lives of pygmy owls in a way that I’m not sure any other book does” — a reminder that just beyond our daily paths, an entire world is unfolding.
David Friedman, @friedart, is a visual artist specializing in papercutting, printmaking, and painting. He and his dog, Poppi @poppipdx, can be seen daily at Wilshire Park. His work is on display at the Alberta Street Gallery, daily 11-7.