Tag Archives: Birds

Courage at Twilight: A Sort of Ending

At almost 89 years, Dad just keeps waking up every morning, day after day after day. His t-shirt garment tops are too tight around the neck and try to strangle him in his sleep, so he sleeps without a top now, or a bottom. Life is simpler that way. Mom pulls the shower door closed regularly at 8:00 AM with a bang which I have learned is not a body falling to the floor. This morning, I needed to escape the comfortable incarceration of home to seek beauty on nature’s trails. That seems to be my life’s aspirational pursuit: finding beauty. The twisted canyon where two glaciers once ground away at each other seemed unusually lush. On their steep meadows, cut gently by a meandering snowmelt stream, the wildflowers grew in excess of three feet tall, all of them: yellow-flowered strawberry, white columbine, lavender lupine, sticky geranium, both the pink and the white, firecracker penstemon, powdery blue bells, the unfortunately named beard tongue, larkspur, paintbrush, sweet pea, catnip, purple and yellow daisies, and blue flax. On this day’s journey to Desolation Lake, I climbed one slow step after another, steady. One just keeps going, on and on, up and up. Pretty middle-aged faces passed me, in both directions, and I said Hello to each, and each became the last in a long, knotted thread of lost opportunities to connect with another human being, for my lack of skill and courage. At the lake, feeling very tired, I stopped and sat on a log, for there is nothing wrong with stopping to rest on one’s journey. A small flock of hairy woodpeckers, almost a foot long each, graced me by landing in the ponderosa pines and quaking aspens, very near to me—one of them looked over at me, I am sure—and hammered at the trunks in rapid staccato. I wondered if the dasher’s one-hundredth-of-a-second stopwatch would still tick too slowly to measure the motions of these birds. They flew off, and I moved on to the mountain’s descent, not without growing pain from a swelling Achilles tendon. Never without pain on these trails, never without loss, and grief, all wrapped up in tenderness and love and the beauty of wildflowers and butterfly wings and birdsong and the burbling of water over rocks. Mr. Rogers and Kermit the Frog both have taught me that every ending is a new beginning, that every good-bye points to the next reunion. Forever. When does a story find its end? How does a writer know when to put down the pen? When, perhaps, it is springtime in the Rockies, and the swallowtails fly very close and bob their hello, and the stands of bluebells and columbines waive their petals against the canvas, and a bird I have not met sends her voice to echo through the trees with the loose embouchure air of a reedy flute.

Courage at Twilight: Living Through Me

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Some people need to talk—a lot. Some people prefer to listen. A match of these two is fortunate. I have already described how Dad talks and tells his stories and expounds upon religion and history and morality and family and the contents of the encyclopedia, and how I am more of a listener who at 60 is weary of listening. Gloria, however is another talker. She cares for Dad several mornings a month, and the conversations begins rapid fire the moment she calls “Good morning!” from the top stair. When Gloria talks, Dad listens. When Dad talks, Gloria listens. Yet, somehow, they both seem to talk continuously. Today I caught snippets about Gloria’s sick cat and how the dry cat food and wet cat food each affect the cat’s weight and health and energy and general demeanor, and how the cat is slowly getting better with good cat food and care. Dad took his turn about the cosmic character of the universe with its gravity and dark matter and fusion and electromagnetic energy and relativity physics vis a vis quantum physics. Both are vaguely sympathetic to what the other is saying, but mostly they each appreciate being able to talk and being listened to. Did you know that a mere 20 years ago, the consensus among cosmologists and xenobiologists was the impossibility of intelligent life anywhere in the universe but on our Goldilocks Zone earth, but that today, with the James Webb telescope’s discoveries, the consensus has shifted to the statistical impossibility that intelligent life does not thrive among the trillions of habitable planets orbiting in the trillions of solar systems orbiting in the trillions of galaxies or our vast universe. Her cat prefers the wet food. We will never know because even light takes one hundred thousand light years to travel to us. The vet’s treatments are helping. Time for your shower, Nelson. I returned from my ten-mile Jordan River paddle long after Gloria had gone for the day. The olive-brown water ran at a 15-year high and swept us pleasantly downriver. The toughest stretch of the paddle was the half-mile portage through head-high thistles with mean mean thorns and willowy willows and sage brush, so aromatic, daisy-chain carrying our kayaks single-file to where we could cross the private hydroelectric dam that also splits the river into two enormous irrigation canals, the river itself suddenly shrinking by two-thirds. Weary and blistered and scratched upon arrival home, Dad called out with his usual cheer: “Roger! Welcome home!” followed by “Sit down and tell us all about it. The people. The river. The wildlife.” And so I told them about the thistles and dams and slow high olive-brown water, and the people, and the birds: the Clark’s grebes, cormorants, pelicans, belted kingfishers, Bullock’s orioles, avocets, ibis, phalaropes, terns, stilts, Canada geese, mallard ducks. I did not tell them how I was so eager in the twilight to show my friend Stephen a beaver and saw one in the shadows and called to Stephen “There! Beaver!” only to have the beaver sprout wings and take flight. “I think that’s a duck,” he dead panned, “or maybe a duck-beaver.”

Courage at Twilight: Fiercely Red

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Northern Goshawk | Northern Goshawks are impresive when you … | Flickr

Mom stood. Up from her recliner. During a commercial break. “Are you going to the bathroom?” Dad asked with a touch of accusing panic, for the urge had struck, and he gets so little notice, and every second counts on the 12-foot journey. “Yes,” she spat. “Don’t worry, Dad,” I assured him, “she’ll be out by the time you’re up.” Dad sat, stymied. Sunk in his recliner. During the commercial break. He still had not stood when Mom came wandering into the kitchen, her business done, to check on my cooking. The Jeopardy buzzers buzzed. “Are you finished, Lucille?” Dad barked after the commercial break. “Yes,” she called. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he lobbed, struggling and shaking to stand and stoop over the walker, his time perilously past. “I’M FINISHED!” she hissed. “Didn’t you hear the flush?” A streak of white flashed in my periphery and something bounced hard against the kitchen window, two feet from me. I knew, of course, what it was, sort of, a bird, but my heart pounded anyway. We hustled outside to find the bird sitting in the dirt, a gray falcon or hawk of some kind, sitting awkwardly, wings askew, head rocked back on its neck. Its red eyes glared fiercely at us, and it panted rapidly with parted beak. Well, that’s the end of this bird. Its neck is broke. Such a startling beautiful creature. I was powerless to make a difference for the hawk, and let it be, returning sadly to my cooking. The children and grandchildren remained, marveling and sad. Then Lila screamed, and Brian poked his head through the door to tell me the bird had stood up and pushed off in flight. Well, I’m sure glad to be wrong. Audubon informed me the bird was a Northern Goshawk. The kitchen window had vinyl grids that I thought would have averted the bird. But from its vantage point outside, I could see the window was filled with a glare reflecting the mountains and trees and sky behind. And the goshawk had been flying like a line-drive baseball after a sparrow. Days and weeks later, the goshawk’s scarlet boring ferocity still flashed in memory. The bird had dared me to underestimate her, and had defied the neck-breaking brick and glass of humanity, and had flown off above the house and trees and everything into its freedom sky. The red-headed house finch was not so fortunate. She landed on the arborvitae, on the bird netting wrapped around, and became irretrievably enmeshed, dying before I knew, before I could scoop her out and set her free.

(Photo from Flickr.com and used pursuant to the fair use doctrine.)

Courage at Twilight: Making Some Sense of the World

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The law firm had changed names four times in the decade-and-a-half since Mom and Dad retained a friend of a friend to prepare their estate planning documents. But I tracked down the firm and the lawyer, and scheduled to meet. I have felt unprepared to be the personal representative of Mom’s and Dad’s small estate, and had many questions, such as, Do they need to update their documents? How do I handle the cars? Is the deed correct? What is an estate tax credit? Do I need to understand QTIP? (No.) What is the first call I make when the time comes? What is your hourly rate? He told me not to worry, that I was well-prepared, even “light years” ahead of 95% of his clients. I breathed deeply and reassured myself, Maybe I can do this after all. Then I was off to NOMAS’ Thursday evening clinic to help with a U crime-victim visa for a humble hard-working woman whose paramour turned perpetrator, who refused to work or contribute to business and household expenses and who screamed and threatened and hammered, whose trump card in oppressing her with power and control was the threat of deportation if she called the police. But the U visa helps people be in America legally and shelters victims of crime from the further victimization and trauma of deportation for their mere victimhood. I knew how to find the court dockets and case numbers and protective orders that would corroborate her truthfulness and his abuse, and printed them for the file. Driving away from the clinic, I saw some clients walking down the street, laden with foodstuffs from the community pantry, laboring to the bus stop with their sacs and their children, because they cannot afford cars or cannot afford to fix their cars, and thought of my neighbors with their several Porsches and BMWs, and still cannot make sense of the world. I stopped at NY Pizza Patrol for a Brazilian Bahaiana pizza with calabresa sausage and kalamata olives and sliced eggs: I just could not face the kitchen for a 9:00 dinner. The pizza was a rare treat, which Mom and Dad (and I) loved. On Friday evenings in June, I have been trying to make sense of the world, searching for calm and beauty on the calm brown waters of the Jordan River. Dozens of homeless encampments lined the banks of one urban section. A beaver and birds greeted me downstream: black cormorants, Bullock’s orioles, Clark’s grebes, coots, Canada geese, Mallard ducks, avocets, black-necked stilts, Wilson’s phalaropes. I missed seeing my territorial friend the belted kingfisher, and hoped he had not fallen prey to a Swainson’s hawk. With my new and first-ever drybag clipped to the kayak, and my phone hanging safely in its clear pouch around my neck, I lounged in the shade under a willow bush, smelling sweet Russian olive blossoms and arousing yellow iris blooms, when the Messenger alert rang and rang and rang while I fumbled to answer, knowing who it likely was, and, yes, it was William calling me from his high chair where he sat munching on pineapple chunks, with his smiling adoring amazing mother beside, telling me about her day as I floated and rocked on the river, making some sense of the world.

Yours Truly on the Jordan River.

Courage at Twilight: Oh, That Bird!

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“Lucille!” I thought perhaps I might have heard from under my cool-morning covers the calling of Mom’s name, but I could not deny even in my profound grogginess the second “Lucille!!” with clearly Nelson-like tones, and I jumped from my bed fully alert and threw on my bathrobe and bolted to Dad’s room. Mom, alerted from downstairs, whence she heard his bellowing even without her hearing aids and even with her ever-present morning music plucking away—this time a harp concerto—raced upstairs, a slow sprint across the house and up on the stair lift in time to hear me call: “Is everything okay, Dad?” Of course, everything is okay, he said, oblivious of our cause for alarm. “When you go to Harmons,” he said cheerily, “if they have fresh cherries, open the bag and squeeze one to make sure they are ripe and not rotten or green, and get two bags, no, three, because John likes them, too, and tap on the watermelon like I showed you to make sure it’s ripe and not overripe or green—of course, you can’t tell the taste by tapping.” Mom sat on her cedar chest crying quietly from fright and relief and frustration, and I could not help remonstrating that I have been sitting on the edge of my metaphorical bed for two years waiting to hear him shout “Lucille!!!” so I could run to his rescue, save him from some crisis, lift him off the floor, and he’s shouting “Lucille!!!!” to make sure we check the ripeness of the cherries at Harmon’s? “Why, yes,” because company was coming, and everything had to be just right, including the tomato bisque, including two loaves of gluten-free bread, and sliced mild cheese, but no meat for the vegetarian melts, and guacamole and salsa and humus and two bags of corn chips, and gluten-free cakes, and just-right cherries and watermelon. “I told you we were shopping at 10!” Mom burst out, “and it’s only 8!” and “why would you shout for me throughout the whole house to tell me to squeeze the cherries!” and she stumbled back to the slow lift down the stairs to her harp music and her soggy breakfast, and I could not be angry because of how comical the whole scene struck and because everything was okay, because he was not dead or on the floor but was okay. “I’m sorry I shouted for Lucille to come,” Dad lamented as I yawned, for my body so ached in the night that I could not sleep and had taken naproxen sodium and half a fluoxetine hydrochloride at one in the morning and had a lovely sleep until I heard “Lucille!!!!!” because 13 miles on the Jordan River down rapids through eddies and mysterious invisible cross currents and from long portages around the dams and with the awkward ins and outs from my kayak on the muddy banks had pulled and twisted and tired me out, but that bird we saw, oh, that bird, that black-crowned night heron that watched me float within ten feet before it flew a hundred feet downstream and watched me again approach until I could see his crimson eye and the long white head feathers streaking loosely down his black back and the hint of yellow on his neck, stretch after hundred-foot stretch, mile after mile, until he flew back up stream back to his territorial stretch to stalk for ducklings and fish. “You can go back to sleep if you want—it’s only 8 o’clock.”

Courage at Twilight: Reminiscing with Mr. Towhee

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The Spotted Towhee pecked at seeds on the ground and flitted from tree to rock to limb. I watched him for a full 20 minutes, and decided he was such an adorable little creature. I think he has taken up residence in the tangle of arctic willow trunks. Watching the pretty bird in the cool evening breeze, I reflected on many things. On how Dr. Seegmiller has decided to care for his invalid patients by making home visits, kneeling at recliners to clip nails and shave callouses. On how the new Church missionary from our neighborhood, off to Argentina for 18 months, had discounted her “simple faith” because it was not more sophisticated or profound, not realizing, yet, that simple faith is pure and powerful faith: genuine. On how Dad observed one evening, “Rog, if you got married now, we would be in a rest home” and I thought he might be right, and I determined to continue my mission to minister to my parents in their days of feebleness and need. On how I gave an ethics presentation to the city’s Public Works Department (water, sewer, and roads divisions), a tough crowd in boots and ball caps and dirty jeans, and how I coaxed them to laugh and to think, and how Mom and Dad insisted I show them my PowerPoint slides in an abbreviated show, and how we learn ethics through living, and promise to do better next time. On how I took Mom and Dad for a roll, pushing Mom’s wheelchair, past the guard shack and gate, into wealth and privilege, all the Porsches and Audis and Lincolns and BMWs racing by, and how they are not representative of most of America, or of me, and how I joked with Dad that he would be pulled over if he didn’t stop riding off the edge of the asphalt trail. And on how Steven had remarked that for all Dad’s disappointment and misery, and despite two minutes of agony every two hours (when nature calls), he is happy in his life, reading his books (several a week), scanning the New York Times (daily), watching television (totally at Mom’s mercy since he cannot operate the remote), enjoying tasty nutritious food (yesterday French sauteed chicken in onion cream sauce), visiting with visitors (from church, mostly), balancing his checkbook (check register in one hand, pencil in the other, calculator on his lap), doting on grandchildren and great-grandchildren (I have lost count), and chatting with his white-haired sweetheart (of 62 years). And Mr. Towhee hopped and flew all the while.

Above: French sauteed chick in onion cream sauce, roasted tarragon asparagus, and scalloped potatoes from a box.

Below: The melted jumper cables from my failed attempt to jump start Mom’s dead car battery.

Courage at Twilight: Recharged

Courage at Twilight: Hummingbirds and Rot

Courage at Twilight: Nature’s Serendipity

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The mountain bike trail proved too challenging for me: too steep and too rocky for too long. I stopped pedaling a dozen times to rest and drink and slow my racing heart. Walking the steepest stretches, I finally reached the top of the trail, marked by a bridge over the river, set Dad’s red vintage Specialized against a tree, and stepped down the fractured granite to the riverside, where I knelt and cupped icy water onto my feverish head. How relieving that cold water felt, and I calmed and relaxed. The river cascaded violently and deafeningly down and past, lurching between thousands of giant rough angular granite boulders. My peripheral vision detected a short-tailed gray bird land on a mid-river rock downstream, bobbing on her backward knees, lifting her very-short tail with each bow. She fluttered from boulder to boulder, thrusting her black beak into the current to pick nymphs and rollers off rocks, working her way toward me, at times even immersing and walking along the river bottom to find insect morsels. I sat perfectly still and she paid me no heed as she came to within six feet, preening her delicate gray plumage before me in a spot of full sun, then hopped back into the shadows to work her way upstream and around a bend fifty feet off. What an encounter! Forty years ago, Dad and I left the Sawtooth Mountain trail to follow the stream, and saw a little gray bird with a short tail hopping and bobbing along a log fallen across the stream. The bird grasped the bark with its long feat and stepped around the circumference of the log from dry air to upside-down and under water, emerging dry and pretty on the other circumference side. Dad and I were gob smacked. A Robin-like bird that walks and hunts underwater in a swift mountain stream? We had never heard of such a bird. But our field guide introduced us to the American Dipper, and, though a colorless non-descript little bird, she has become one of our favorites. Memories of our first Dipper and the stream and the forest and the mountains and the moose and trout and bear and beaver and the wild blueberries flooded back to Dad’s perfect recollection as I described my new and fortuitous encounter. I discovered as a boy that Nature comes to me when I am still. I do not call her or pursue her. I study and I watch and I wait, in good places and at right times, and Nature’s path veers toward mine to grace me with intimate unearned wildlife experiences. My children know this, and we both marvel at Nature’s magical providence. The butterflies come, and I know their names and their habits, and I talk to them: “Hello Beautiful,” I whisper to the Tiger Swallowtail or the Red-spotted Purple. “You look lovely and strong today.” The deer come, and the beaver, the Red Slider turtle and the Belted Kingfisher and Clark’s Grebe and Black-crowned Night Heron. “Hello pretty Mama,” I once whispered to a Mule Deer doe suckling her spotted fawn, the mother taut with fear, ready to pronk away, and I reassure her, “Don’t worry, little Mama, I will not hurt you or your magical spotted fawn. You need not fear me. I will wait right here until you are ready for me to pass.”

(Photo above from eBird.org, used pursuant to the Fair Use Doctrine.)

Pictured below: photos of Little Cottonwood trail, creek, and canyon. The trailhead is a ten-minute drive from Mom’s and Dad’s house.

Courage at Twilight: A Turtle and a Grebe

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I waltzed up the river with strong strokes. Pull-rest-rest. Pull-rest-rest. The hen and her ducklings huddled tight against the bank looking every bit the bunch of muddy roots. How do ducklings love their father drake? I wonder. He has flown this stretch of river. “Happy Father’s Day, Dad!” came the texts. Is that how it is done, I wonder: four small typed words with a diminutive exclamation mark? I handed Dad a thick old book, yellowed, wrapped in newspaper, in a red paper sack, to thank him for being my father. Fiorello LaGuardia: the Italian Mayor of New York City who took on the Tammany Hall political machine, and won. A black-crowned night heron rose from the riverbank with five-foot wings barred black and white, as silent as my waltzing river pondering. How do his chicks say Happy Father’s Day? I wonder. With urgent shrieks for regurgitated fish, no doubt, and by leaving the nest! What a magnificent beautiful creature. I imagine the carp fingerlings say nothing at all, glad not to be gobbled. And I baked a pesto chicken orzo casserole and a sticky pudding cake full of dates and walnuts dribbled with hot toffee-cream syrup. Oh, and first dibs to Dad on my book by Beryl Markham, an early pilot who flew single-props with open cockpits, who flew so intimately with planet earth, skimming the tall tree tops—she could see the waves and smiles of the farmers and they could see hers. I have reached my three-mile turn-around too soon—I feel I could paddle up this river forever, relaxed and calm, not having the answers, and at peace with that unknowing. My two youngest played cello-piano duets to Mom and Dad and me, moving us with their beauty and the music’s beauty. “Rafting the river . . . I remember you naming every single type of butterfly we saw. You knew everything about them. And the trees and birds and wildflowers, too. You taught me to look for the small and simple things, and remember the value they add to our lives.” Thank you, son. (I’ll have you write my epitaph.) Maybe Bullock’s orioles chitter cheerfully to celebrate their fathers, flashing their oranges blacks and whites in their excitement. I don’t know that little turtles thank their big-shell papas, sunning exclusively on fallen tree trunks, necks and legs stretched out pleasurably, imperiously, a knot of dried algae on one’s back. I sent my sons-turned-fathers a handmade card with a personal note of admiration and encouragement and a token ten-dollar bill. Does that count? Yes, that counts—every sincere expression counts. “Oh, my dear Daddy. How I love and honor you and appreciate with deep gratitude all that you do for me.” Thank you, sweet daughter of mine. A Clark’s grebe with white face and black crown and piercing yellow beak and piercing scarlet eye dove and dove as I approached, then appeared twenty-five yards behind me. What a magnificent beautiful creature! His chicks would easily admire him. “I love you Daddy!” That’s how it’s done: with love. I love you, too.

Pictures above and below: scenes from the Jordan River, in Utah, today.

Courage at Twilight: Wheat and Tares and Black-Capped Chickadees

Courage at Twilight: Sundry

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Ely discovered water pooled on the laundry room floor and reported the flood to Mom. Together they mopped up the water with rags. Appliance said he could have a new pump shipped from Washing in a few days. I had procrastinated, and needed to wash my clothes that very day. I focused on yard work, putting off my evening trip to the laundromat. But when Terry and Pat, the nice neighbors, stopped by to visit, Mom told them about the washer and the laundromat and they insisted I come to their house to use their washer. “Do you want me to do it for you?” Pat asked kindly, but I do not allow anyone handle my dirty laundry, and told her I would enjoy doing it, thank you. Ely is a housecleaner. Dad has vacuumed the carpets and swept and mopped the floors and cleaned the bathrooms and scrubbed the shower walls his whole married life, but has run out of strength, mobility, and steam. Ely, a delightful, humble, thorough dual citizen, now takes care of what Mom and Dad can no longer take care of. They do not call her the cleaning lady; they call her Ely, their friend and indispensable helper. The house tidied, Brian and Avery arrived with two-year-old Lila to celebrate his 32^nd birthday, and I was touched he wanted to celebrate with us. We set up cornhole and ring toss and a PVC scaffold onto which one tosses golf balls joined by short ropes. Lila objected to how my rope-tied-spheres hung from the rungs—“No! Gwampa Waja!” she insisted. She repositioned each hanging rope according to her adorable imagination, delightedly proclaiming the decorated structure her Christmas tree. At dinner, I decided ground sirloin is much tastier than hamburger, well worth the extra one dollar per pound. I had prepared a birthday dessert from my French cookbook—Brian chose chocolate mousse, which I have mastered after many trials. Into the dessert cups we jammed and lighted three candles. Lila made sure her daddy blew them out correctly. An unconventional birthday “cake,” still the result was superb (thank you Julia), with strong Pero substituting for strong coffee. The sun dipped low behind the house, and the air quickly chilled. Dad and I sat on patio chairs listening to the red House Finch sing with happy gusto, perched on a spiny blue spruce nearby. “Listen to that little guy sing!” Dad hooted. We commented on what a happy thing it is—a happy miraculous thing—that nature sings.

Courage at Twilight: Guinness and Treacle Bread

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After watching me mix and knead breads and bakes for eight months, Mom and Dad informed me we were purchasing a bread mixer. NutriMill makes a Bosch lookalike for half the price, and we brought one home, along with a “baker’s pack” because I am a baker and a Baker. On my first attempt, I dumped in all the ingredients and watched the dough not mix and the dough hook grab the poorly combined mass and whirl it around uselessly. Hannah (and the owner’s manual) instructed me on pouring in the liquid ingredients first, turning the mixer on low, and adding the dry ingredients slowly. The technique worked. Our first success was Paul Hollywood’s Guinness and Treacle bread. Into the bowl I poured a bottle of warm dark-and-stout beer, tablespoons of molasses, water, and yeast, and turned the mixer to level 1, while Hannah slowly tossed in the dry ingredients: whole wheat flour and strong white flour. The dough hook mixed the trickling flour into the yeasty treacle-beer until we had a sticky dough that the dough hooks pummeled and whipped enthusiastically. While the dough rested and rose, I sat at Mom’s laptop to help her with a Word document: she had made revisions accidentally using the Review tool and felt exasperated by the unwelcome blue insertions and red strikeout deletions. “I promise you, Mom: one button-click and your document will be fixed.” She was incredulous at the simple “Accept All Changes and Stop Tracking” function. That task accomplished, I lifted and hauled off Mom’s cracked and broken chair mat, and laid the new mat in place—the chair casters would no more anchor the chair immovably in the hole. Dad, in the meantime, had noticed how dusty the living room sofas had become, and was struggling with his carpet cleaner to shampoo the floral sofas. “Look how nice they look!” he crowed: the sofas did look bright and brand new. Just as the oven pre-heat bell sounded, I finished hanging the thistle seed sock feeders for the goldfinches, pine siskins, and house finches, which will land grasping the socks and pull and crack the tiny musky seeds one by one. Mournfully, we had discarded the other feeders because falling masses of disfavored seeds attracted a family of rats, and we could not have rats, and so also could not have bird feeders, much to Dad’s sadness. But rats will not be interested in empty Niger husks. The socks happily hung, I peeled the risen Guinness dough onto the 400-degree stone, and the house filled with a most delicious aroma.

Courage at Twilight: Flicker

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I have seen the Red-shafted Northern Flicker flash her orange primary underfeathers, and her white backside button, as she torpedo-dove from her hole in the snag. I have heard the Flicker’s sad cry, piercing and irresistible. I have watched the Flicker stand cantilevered on the trunk to feed her clamorous young. But I have never heard the machine-gun rap of her beak on deadwood, as I did today, echoing through Dimple Dell. But there she was, high in the dead cottonwood. I know the bird better now, and love her more.

(Images from Birdsofafeather.org and Newsweek.com, used pursuant to the Fair Use Doctrine.)

Learning to Speak Goose

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Learning to Speak Goose

Kayaking for the two-dozenth time on the same stretch of the Jordan River, a natural phenomenon new to me showed itself as I paddled along upstream. The river is full of such surprises, which it gives me the honor of witnessing, a few at a time, so as not to overwhelm my feelings of wonder, and not to dull my sense of the miraculous. A gander, a Canada Goose, led a small pre-fledged gaggle of goslings upriver, the mama goose in the place of caboose. I approached them carefully, paddling slowly against the current, to say hello. And they responded by gathering speed and flicking their beaked heads nervously this way and that. Though of course I had no intention of hurting them or frightening them, or even teasing them, nature dictated that they fear me. And rightly so, for I am sure I seemed to them a giant malevolent alien goose-hunting weapon-wielding creature, easily capable of ending their lives. The gander knew I was gliding faster than he could ever swim, and abandoned his effort to outpace me. Switching strategies, he prepared for flight—a smart plan, with a good chance of success, since he could fly infinitely faster and higher than I could fly, though I wondered about his abandonment. But he could not seem to launch, instead flapping his wings loudly and frantically on the water, as if hurt.

That Mr. Gander sure tricked me. He fooled me good. His antics made focusing on him irresistible. Finally yanking my attention away from the frantic papa goose, I looked back to the mama goose and goslings to see how they fared, but saw only fading ripples. They were gone, disappeared, and did not reappear while I sat and drifted, befuddled. Resuming my upstream slog, I almost failed to notice the same number of goslings of the same age and fuzziness ensconced safely behind a leafy branch hanging low over the bank, some one hundred feet from the dive: clearly the same goslings who gave me the slip while I focused on the feigning father. That gander had drawn my whole attention to him, for the sake and safety of his little ones, his progeny, and his mated partner. I had failed to understand that by slapping his wings on the water he was signaling his objection to my invasion of family space, and warning me to keep away. I had ignored his clear Goose-speak (I really need to learn Goose), and he had water-slapped away, not abandoning his family (of course), but protecting his family. I will keep my distance next time the wings beat on the water, and respect the family space. The Jordan is goose home, after all, and I am just a curious occasional uninformed rather rudely interloping human, who doesn’t know the language.

(The Jordan River, named by 1840s Mormon pioneers fleeing to Utah from religious persecution in the frontier United States, flows north from the freshwater Utah Lake into the vast fishless Great Salt Lake, reminding the refugees of the homeland of their God Jesus.)

Image of Goose Family by TheOtherKev from Pixabay

They Fell from the Sky

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They Fell from the Sky

Hundreds of them. Eared Grebes. The birds precipitated from inside crystalline clouds where the sunlight flashed in an infinity of ice atoms swirling and refracting in a frozen explosion of brilliance, as if the sun raged coldly right there inside the clouds. The birds became utterly hopelessly disoriented in the icy intensity, blind, not knowing up from down. Hundreds of grebes dropped from the mists to bounce into buildings, cars, trees, yards, and parking lots. And there she stood, unmoving, in my parking space, her olive-brown feet stuck frozen to the ice. My office key made a crude chisel for chopping around her toes – they bled and flaked skin already. I wrapped her in my coat and sat her in a box by my desk, with cracker crumbs and a bowl of water.

The children begged to open the box and see what was scratching inside, and exhaled exclamations of wonder when they saw. What IS it? She’s an Eared Grebe. Look at her pointy black beak, her long flaring golden feathers that look like ears, and her crimson eyes. Do you know what you call a group of grebes? A Water Dance! Can’t you just picture the family flapping and paddling and splashing their delighted dance on the lake?

What are we going to do with her? Can we fill the bath tub? Our grebe paddled around with obvious enthusiasm. What are we going to feed her? How about fish! Tub-side with a bag of goldfish, the children clamored for the privilege of feeding their bird. Our compromise: eight hands held the bloated bag and poured. She darted after the fish in a flash of black and gold and red, a little paddling package of magnificence. Look at her feet – no webbing. Look at how her toes unhinge with little retractable paddles. Wow! came in whispers.

That needling question of what to do with the bird in the bathtub? We would try a nearby pond, and hope for the best. The children watched her swim away and they looked sad and happy and I sensed how singular a blessing to have welcomed that bit of living feathered grace into our human home, to release her willfully, to be moved by her wildness and beauty. And I hoped a small sliver of that exquisiteness would stay behind in memories of hinged toes and golden ears and red red eyes, and of creatures that dance on the water.

(Image by David Mark from Pixabay.)

Roger is the author of Rabbit Lane: Memoir of a Country Road and A Time and A Season.

Songs of Spring

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How delightful are the sights and sounds of Spring. Winter has lain upon the land so long that we have almost forgotten the sounds of warm-weather life. With the melting snow, the greening grass, and the budding trees, we know that Spring is coming. Best of all, the migrating birds are returning and singing their beautiful, unique songs. The yellow-breasted Meadowlark is a favorite, with its complicated melody. I hope you enjoy this poem about the songs of Spring.

Songs of Spring

Ice and snow begin
to yield to a longer sun.

Meadowlarks have returned
singing melodies:
sogladwearetobeback!
arentyouhappytohearus?
sogladwearetobesingingandsingingandback!

A hundred little blackbirds
in a bare tree top prattle,
zippatappazaptap!
zikkatikkazakkatat!

Robin hops quietly
in the greening grass,
stops to reconnoiter,
searching,
one eye for juicy brown earthworms,
the other for the cat.

Chapter 3: Hawk

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–In the presence of goodness, good people rejoice.–

My boots crunch loudly on the loose and frozen gravel, rousing common sparrows from their cold roosts in the willow and wild rose bushes. Despite being leafless in December, the bushes seem an impenetrable tangle of twigs and dead leaves. I hear, rather than see, the birds fluttering and tweeting within. I have bundled myself against the bitter cold, and wonder how these almost weightless creatures survive Winter. I imagine them huddled in their houses, mostly protected from the wind, their feathers puffed out to gather insulating air, with temperatures sinking to just above zero. I marvel that these birds constantly peep and sing, fluttering about with the energy of jubilation. I envy them their unconditional happiness. I have come to appreciate their enthusiasm, to rely upon their unassailable cheerfulness. Continue reading →

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Learning to Speak Goose

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They Fell from the Sky

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