“My dad is my hero,” he says. “A true naturalist. He taught me early not just to appreciate nature, but to leave a place better looking than it was when we arrived. And really, pretty much everything else in the Boy Scout oath.”
Mullins, a one-time scout who got out of the ranks to play high school football, is as much a part of the terrain, it seems, as the snowy egrets. When he’s not picking up, I’ll sometimes bump into him in the weeds, where he waits patiently, spotting scope in hand, ear to the wind.
“I’m obsessed with nature,” the father of two college kids laughs. “But especially, the sounds of the birds. I think I have a photographic memory when it comes to those sounds. They just stick in my head after hearing them once. Woodpeckers, red-tail hawks, peregrine falcons — they’re like voices to me, instantly recognizable voices.”
And for this gift he also credits his dad, Gary Mullins.
“He’d wake me up early when we were growing up out in Brea to listen to the pheasants and the coyotes — my dad really made sure I appreciate nature to its fullest.”
Today, Gary lives in Huntington Beach and he occasionally takes walks with Steve at the wetlands, where the son now points out things to his teacher — his hero — his dad.
But as noble as Steve’s passion for nature and picking up are, I’d be remiss if I didn’t focus on what seems to be Steve’s true purpose out here in the wetlands. You may have seen him in his true mode as you drive by on Pacific Coast Highway. Look for a large group of school kids being led out on a nature walk, and you may then notice a Pied Piper-esque leader before them — Steve.
