As the weeks have turned into months, I've been discovering even more reasons to love my new commute.
When I describe it as a "backroad through farm country," that is not poetic exaggeration. The road snakes past dozens of farms of every variety. Dairy farms, horse farms, plow-plant-harvest farms, even more than one
llama farm. And as the season has slowly turned, I've been able to glimpse the changes occurring on some of the farms as I make my way past them every day. I've started noticing that several of the cowherds now include a calf or two. And I've watched the fields progress from dirt, to rows of dirt piles, to green lawns, to fields of waving shoots. I'm enjoying the game of trying to guess what each of the plants in the various fields are from their early sproutings. Most of them look like wheat to my uneducated eyes, but it's definitely possible that they could be some other grain, and it's even conceivable that some of them could be corn. I'll find out soon enough. I'm looking forward to that more that I'd like to admit, honestly.
I'm struck by how much I'm enjoying the opportunity to be a silent witness to this progress of biology. And I'm reminded of the swallows from last Spring.
We really don't want birds nesting around our building, but because of the beautiful garden with its variety of trees and bushes and flowers and its never-ending source of water in the form of a bubbling fountain, wild animals of every variety are naturally attracted to it. So, every year we come up with new remedies to stop birds from nesting in the places they nested the year before, and every year they find ever more ingenious ways to outwit us. Last Spring, when they couldn't find any place else to do it, a pair of swallows simply built a nest directly onto a vertical brick wall in our building's entryway, eight feet above the ground. Just to be clear, the nest was not resting
on anything - it was simply glued directly onto a brick wall, by means of some unknown adhesive. I was so delighted by the sheer audacious tenacity of this, that I didn't even mind being outwitted by a bird. (And honestly, I wouldn't have minded, regardless. I love it when nature reminds me that we don't know half as much as we think we do.)
But even better than this, was that every day I got to walk past these nesting birds at least twice. And so I was given regular glimpses into their lives. I noticed when one of them (presumably the mother) was in the nest every time I walked by, where before it had usually been empty. I remember the day shortly thereafter when I first heard the cacophony of tweets echoing from the nest, and looked up to see the horrendously ugly faces of several new-born chicks squawking at me hungrily. After that, I was fortunate enough to get to see their parents feeding them a time or two. And over the course of the next several weeks, I watched those chicks grow faster than I ever thought possible, until suddenly they were full-grown birds, indistinguishable from their parents.
I remember the day I came home from work, and passing out of the entryway and into our garden, one of the birds flew directly at me, veering off what seemed mere inches from my face. At first I was upset, wondering why this parent-bird was attacking me. What could I possibly have done to threaten them, just walking by as I've done so many times before? Following the flight of the bird up above the garden, I saw several of them swooping and diving in odd arcs, occasionally diving right at each other, often narrowly missing other objects in their path. And they weren't going very high, either, tending to stay within the confines of the courtyard. It was all very odd behavior that I hadn't seen before. But then I noticed that the nest was empty. And with that, I finally realized that these were the
new birds, not their parents. They must've just learned to fly! Probably that very day. When that bird flew at my face it wasn't attacking me, it was a near-miss on toddler-wings. It was probably just as freaked out by the experience as I was! And now they were
playing in the air above me, testing their new power and freedom, feeling the wind in their feathers for the very first time. You could see they were still trying to figure it all out - still hadn't quite got the hang of it all, still afraid of going too high, or too far from home. I had to just stop and watch for a while. It was so beautiful.
Then, as Spring turned into Summer, I watched as the parents flew off, leaving their adolescents behind forever. I watched the remaining birds grow until they could no longer fit in the nest. Once they were too big, they perched on a nearby video camera on the opposite wall of the entryway. The sibling-birds stayed there for weeks, too timid to leave home just yet, wanting to stay together, in the only world they'd ever known, for as long they could. But, eventually, they disappeared. First one, then another, then the rest all at once. Looking for food, perhaps? Or maybe a mate? Or maybe they were just driven by an innate need to explore, or to start flying North as the season wore on. I'll never know exactly. But I remember experiencing a very peculiar melancholy when I first noticed they had gone. I was sad to see them go, I would honestly miss them - but I was also so excited and amazed at the cycle they were a part of, and that I had been so unbelievably fortunate to have been able to witness so much of it, from start to finish.
I remember those swallows, every time some old codger on the condo board complains about all the bird shit in the entryway, and suggests some new way to drive out the "nuisance." All I can think is, what's a little bird poop, compared to an experience like that? Getting to be a direct witness to the cycle of our biology? Being reminded of how alike we all are, how similar all of Life is? Being given a direct insight into your place in our World? Being fortunate enough to catch a glimpse, just for a moment, of a microcosm of the grand pattern on display throughout the entire Universe? Being able to remember, for a time, just how absolutely fucking
amazing Life is? In the face of all that, who cares about something as trivial as a little bird shit?
I can feel the beginnings of something similar to my experience with the swallows in these peaceful moments on my commute. I can feel the swallows, every time I see the fields have grown a
little more, every time I notice a new calf I've never seen before, bounding after its mother on spindle-legs. But this cycle is slower, and will last longer. It will last until I see the fields barren and covered in snow, and until the snow thaws, and the fields are plowed again. I catch these glimpses every day, and I string them all together in my memory, like an old flip-book penny arcade, and I feel as if I'm watching the cycle of Life on Earth in time-lapse, like Nature's breath - inhale, cold and lifeless - exhale, warm, vibrant growth - and on and on and on - as if I'm watching the planets spin round and around our star, as if I can feel the rotation of the Milky Way itself spinning off into the void, as if that longing in my heart is the tugging weight from the black hole at its center, around which we are all spinning, spinning, spinning...
And I am suddenly so still.
