Birds

Wings and Air

Leaves from our red oak appliqué the lawn. The fall-blooming plants have lost their flowers, save for two azaleas. Butterflies and moths have been visiting the azaleas since the butterfly bushes started dying back. Above, I see woodpeckers from time to time. They dance up and down the trunks of our sweet gums. I’ve seen a slate-colored junco on two occasions. Both times, he was sneaking over the fence to take a dip in one of our birdbaths.

We have three birdbaths. Before we moved to this house, I never paid attention to birds, at least not close attention. The birdbaths came with the home, a gift of sorts from the previous owner. The birds who visit our yard regularly were also a gift. Shortly after moving here, I decided it was time to do something about my long-held desire to identify the birds I saw. I got my wish when I was given a set of bird flashcards and a pair of binoculars. The View-Master effect of the binoculars made the whole world pop to life. I couldn’t believe such wonder existed right outside my door. I’ve spent countless hours not only watching birds but also examining trees, the sky, squirrels, the texture of all manner of surfaces, the shrubs at the back of the property that lean into each other like old friends, and so on.

One of my favorite birds is the junco. I remember them from when we lived here years ago, before we moved away (and subsequently moved back). They frequented the yard at our first house. I remember that time fondly. My trauma was about half what it is now, though those earlier traumas were closer to me, more deeply imprinted, less smoothed by time, effort and consideration. Now, the most recent traumas are the jagged ones. They jar me from sleep at night and intrude on my waking hours.

I’ve been fighting for a long time, for myself and for others. For the most part, I feel unheard and unseen. I am frustrated by the lack of literacy around trauma, oppression, discrimination, and other issues that profoundly affect people’s health and well-being. I am frustrated that neurotypicality is imposed on all levels and that social constructs are mistaken for truths.

The birds help. Immensely. They don’t give me answers, and that’s the whole point of paying attention to them. They allow me to stay on a little island called here and now, unaffected by what’s happened in my past and unburdened by the extremely difficult work of being heard above the din of prevailing beliefs and values.

In these small slices of time, there is nothing wrong, nothing at all. The world is wings and air, and I am part of it.

The Sixth Bird

What is dead: seagull
What is dying: seagull

Evening. My husband and I walk south over wet sand at Cannon Beach, roughly parallel to the ever-shifting waterline. We come across a dead seagull. Another. Another. A carcass every few hundred feet. Each body we come upon is more recently dead than the one before—more in tact, more body-like, more recognizably bird.

We pause at the fifth carcass. It is clearly only hours dead, if that. Thirteen seagulls surround the body. They systematically strip it of flesh.

It seems at first like a random attack but is in fact an organized effort. At any given time, three gulls have the dead bird in their beaks, one at the neck, two clasping either leg. The three pull in unison, stretching the still-pliant body into an expanding triangle until chunks of feathers and flesh tear away. The body breakers hop off to devour their share as three gulls from the larger group move in to perform roughly the same maneuvers as the last.

What is dead: seagull
What is dying: seagull

“Sky burial, this is a kind of sky burial,” I think. The flightless, the dead, being consumed by the living. The dead weighing down the living. The dead being carried off in so many ever-expanding stomachs.

What is dead: seagull
What is dying: seagull

Here and there, clumps of feathers stick out of the sand: What is left over after the harvest cannot be called bodies, can it. Cannot be called flight, since it takes more than feathers to fly. Half-buried dirty broken ornaments these feathers are, nothing more.

The sixth bird is not yet dead. It sits facing the wind. It does not move, except to blink, shiver. Between the wind and the cold, it has been a hard day here for gulls. A dog named Lana tries to attack the dying bird. Lana’s owner pulls her away. Wind blows sheets of dry sand just over wet sand. A pile of sand accumulates in front of the dying bird’s body. Soon the bird is caked in sand, most of its feathers no longer visible. It continues to blink.

I sit alongside until dark. My husband stands behind me. A woman pauses, looks at the bird, says “Circle of life” before moving on. I pick up a small stone near the bird, slip it in my pocket, wish the bird well. We make our way back down the beach, toward the dead, deader.

I wonder if the gulls will wait or begin eating the sixth bird while it is still alive. They gather around the dying gull as we move away.

What is dead: seagull
What is dying: seagull

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Yesterday Jon and I stood on a pier at Juanita Beach Park for a long, long time, waiting for the beavers to return to their den. We’d seen one of them bobbing along the far edge of the water, its wet furry head above, then below, then above, then below the surface. With only the head intermittently in sight, I had to imagine the rest of the creature, its chunky body and short legs, I supposed, paddling awkwardly beneath.

Sometimes the head would come up under a lily pad, which would become an impromptu hat for a foot or two before the plant’s tether would pull the leaf away and the wet furry head would again be revealed.

This is how night should come, I thought.

Jon asked if I was ready to leave yet. He becomes impatient with nature just as nature is about to reveal something to or about him. He likes to move briskly through landscapes because that keeps him in his safe, usual thoughts. Stopping poses a risk because that is when nature can change a person.

But stopping is important. We need to allow ourselves to let nature have a say in how we think about and move through the world. Just ask William Stafford, who urges us to let your whole self drift down like a breath and learn / its way down through the trees … Stand here till all that / you were can wander away and come back slowly, / carrying a strange new flavor into your life.

The beaver was nowhere in sight but we located a mother duck with six ducklings beneath her. She looked like an upside-down Easter basket with all its goodies underneath. She had found a nice spot to camp out for the night and was drifting in and out of sleep, opening her eyes whenever the grass moved, a small bird came near, or a firecracker was set off. I wondered then to what degree wildlife across the United States collectively worries on the Fourth of July. It must sound like the end of the world. Or hunting season.

Jon asked several more times if I was ready. “You ready yet, Bud? Ready now?”

This is how night should come, I thought again. It should come slowly over the trees, above the grasses. It should settle on the water just like this. It should guide the beavers gently and slowly through the water until they find themselves at the worn pathway leading to their den, where they pull themselves onto the mud and wriggle across decaying, tamped foliage, making the final turn into their home and out of our sight.

Yes, it should come just like this.

Last night is the first time in weeks I have not felt anxious and panicky as soon as the sun goes down. Since my test results, I have been so worried about what the diagnosis will be, what comes next and how my life could be severely altered or truncated. As soon as the light begins to fade, my heart rate and blood pressure have begun to rise. I have spent every night in a body that hums with fear. Fear has become its own composition with no end, no rests, no shifts in pitch or volume. Just its continual drone, its dissonant multi-tonal vibration.

But last night, night seemed natural. I was not afraid. I did not kick and scream my way into sleep or try to fight my way out of it once I was there. Last night I was a beaver. I was grass. I was water. I was that whole gloppy corner of the world taking up the darkness and whispering, Yes, yes.