It’s the dawn of a new work week, and the listless and lowering clouds, indecisive and unwilling to commit to a presence today, are reflective of my own mood.
I want them to square their shoulders, band together, stand tall and strong against the weak and pale rays of the sun, to turn the sky dark and unleash what they hold inside.
As it is, the world here fidgets in a holding pattern while they waver, unsure whether to greet the sun or dress for rain.
It only reinforces other feelings of unsettledness, those that accompany the seasonal turn that the calendar has marked as tomorrow, magnified by the other changes, less benign ones, that are the result of a climate now irrevocably altered. It’s an uneasy morning, one that makes me long to return to my own cocoon, blankets pulled up, face hidden from the harsh yellow light.
But we will have no choice, we and this new and altered world, but to find a way to exist together if we are to have any hope of fulfilling our obligations to future generations. It’s difficult now, but much of that is merely the difficulty of coming to terms with what is, even though for the most part, what is is not yet visible. The true hardship is yet to come, and in our lifetimes, it will only have just begun. It will be our children and theirs, and theirs thereafter, who will bear the real burden of navigating life in a new world, simultaneously less sustaining and less sustainable.
Our feathered relations know it; they feel it, too. Their habitat increasingly endangered, they search for safe places to bear and raise their young, hoping to pass on their own identities for future generations, too.
One of those on the newly-indexed “endangered habitat” list is the Bullock’s oriole. They’ve come briefly in years past — not every year; only intermittently. Last year, they showed up at the feeder off and on for a few weeks, and once in a while, it was possible to catch a glimpse of them skimming over the sage and chamisa, but they didn’t stay.
That changed this year. Whether due to having satisfied themselves that this is a safe space, or whether climate change and habitat encroachment elsewhere left them choice, we don’t know. But they spent weeks scouting the land here, looking for a place to birth and raise a family. The finally settled on the upper middle branches of the aspen directly over the picnic table where, when time and temperature and weather permit, we eat breakfast every day.
It seemed an odd choice, so close to large and noisy creatures with two legs and no feathers, surrounded by less large but equally noisy creatures with four legs and fur.
It felt like trust.
And it was a reminder to us, we who have our own origin stories of emergence, that that emergence is not a single step, but a life-long journey into the light. Some days we make more progress; some days, we’re set back. Each day, we have to evaluate the risks and determine whether we’re ready enough, strong and balanced enough, to take the next step, or whether we need to wait and grow a bit more before trying anything bolder than a little forward (upward) movement.
Realizing that you’re not ready can be humbling, or it can be liberating. Mostly, it’s both, rolled up into the bundle of inconsistencies and confusions and contradictions and complications that we call life.
We find our lessons and our guides in those with their own physical wings, een those as yet unable to use them to fly. From the photo’s entry in the new Wingéd Ones series in our Photography Gallery:
GREETING THE WORLD
Out of the fragile walls of the shell, the small feathered ones leave the safety of their first cocoon for another.
Larger, open, airy, with room to stretch and move . . . yet that little bit less safe than the egg’s closed universe.
Still not ready to spread tiny wings, they rest in a world of twig and mud and horsehair, outsized beaks upturned to the sky, waiting for the sustenance that arrives like magic on larger wings.
Soon it will be time to lift their own wings and test the currents, but emergence is a journey — of body, mind, and spirit — not a single heedless headlong leap.
And so for today, arising from the nest floor, lifting their faces to the sky, greeting the world . . . these are journey enough.
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And looking at the face of the little one, upturned with . . . not hope, exactly; more the sure and certain knowledge that its parent would return with what it needed . . . . It reminds me that what what we need is there, too. We’ve been shown the way before, and we’ll be shown the way again.
We only need to pay heed . . . and then to take that next step.
~ Aji
