Yesterday’s forecast produced no more than the briefest of light showers, perhaps a few fine scattered flakes after dark. But the clouds have returned today, and they hang, heavy and dark, close over the land now.
It is, to me, the perfect late November’s day, although I realize that most prefer bright sun. When it comes to weather (as with so much else), I have always been a solitary sort.
Still, today’s clouds will be welcome than usual to most this day, if only for the hope they hold out for another small crack in the drought, a fissure allowing some small amount of precipitation to escape and reach the land.
Such hopes have felt solitary indeed this year.
But this is a desert land, no matter the elevation, and drought is always a possibility, if not generally quite such an all-encompassing state of affairs. Dry rock abounds at the best of times; high craggy outcroppings are adorned with only the hardiest greenery. It’s a harsh land, a lonely land one of wild and unwelcoming extremes . . . and yet it serves as sanctuary for equally solitary spirits.
Wings captured the image above with his old film camera some fourteen or fifteen years ago. It was shot down the Gorge where it winds along the highway heading south toward Santa Fe — old lands, timeless lands, wholly indigenous despite the prevalence now of a modern colonial presence. It’s a place where the eagles return in winter, at least in a good year.
There have not been many good years of late.
And normally, I would expect this not to be a good year, at least in that regard; we are, after all, in the drought’s death grip, with a virus and fascism spreading, both deadly and both unchecked now. But a few days ago, a bald eagle appeared overhead, far closer to human habitation than these normally solitary spirits usually prefer, staying a while to play upon the currents with our resident red-tailed hawk.
It is a rare gift at any time, but all the more so now, and it reminds us that however dangerous the outside world becomes, there are still gifts to appreciate, medicine to honor and enjoy.
And Eagle’s appearance, far up from his more usual winter environs of the Gorge now, reminds us of important lessons in these days when death rides the winds, lessons given to us by the spirits and handed down by the ancestors. We are required now by circumstance to go to ground, so to speak: to isolate, to quarantine, to keep our distance from others for our own safety and for theirs . . . and yet, we cannot disengage from the world that holds us all. There is much work to be done, and much of it can be done at a physical distance, safely, but the point is that it must be done. People fed, rent shared, medical treatment supplied: Money must be raised, masks made, supplies shipped and distributed; firewood and heating funds for elders, clean water for remote places; data tracked and disseminated; virtual ears and shoulders offered and gloved hands extended in mutual aid.
These are obligations, and we are not permitted to shrug them off merely because the world is dangerous.
But there is another lesson Eagle has to teach us, too, one embodied by the image above. Colonialism has brought society so close and endlessly on, the capacity for talking, consuming, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 (or -6) days a year. It has brought with an equally endless impatience, a sense of entitlement and a desire for everything now, performed if not strictly in the company of others, at least for a potentially wide audience.
But such an existence is unsustainable. our ancestors well knew the importance of solitude, even in an unconnected world. The one we inhabit now is many things, but unconnected is not one of them. There is precious little capacity for solitude now, for the chance to sit, alone — simply to be — unless we seek it out and make time and space for it. But we must do that now.
Eagle knows all about finding strength in solitude; it’s why he seeks out high places, far away from even his own. It’s why the great dreamers and prophets of our ancestors sought it, too; they knew well the capacity for time alone, to think, to pray, to entreat the spirits, to produce the wisdom needed in troubling times.
Ceremony is denied us now; any collective expression of community or solidarity has become reckless in the extreme, and our ways do not teach us to put others at risk.
But these times are exactly right for finding strength in solitude, and wisdom, too.
Eagle shows us how.
~ Aji
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