….to watch his woods fill up with snow……
Whose woods these are I think I know……..
I suppose, to a lot of people, I have a very odd coalescence of things that impress me. While most people tend to gaggle at celebrities of the business, fashion or media world, bank accounts, cars, planes, and other modicums of notoriety, I am impressed with a myriad of souls who fly on another radio wave. I guess I fly on another radio wave. The sight of a bird, a petal, a color, a wave or a word of the slightest insignificance in the total scheme of things will stop me dead in my tracks. And it is there that I get my own sense of the word, gratitude.
When I listen closely enough I can feel how small and powerless I am in the world against the elements. Lessons such as these are most humbling and yet are the most beautiful for me. And, if I feel this way, I find myself wondering how the smallest of creatures feel. They have an incredible innate will to survive. I learn many lessons from them.
The photo above, I felt this morning, was taken with a great deal of gratitude from this male cardinal. He spends a lot of time here, and around the feeders I have outside. Yet, he is very skittish and I know he, and his fellow friends can instantly sense my movements inside the house. I know this because when I move even slightly, they most often fly away. This morning, I felt like he allowed me to get very close and snap him. He sat there for a long while and he had to know I was there. And, while I felt it was a gift from him of sorts, he could have actually been reserving warmth for himself for a moment. Does it matter that I imagine he is doing this for me and I could be dead wrong? No.
In the morning, I sit at my morning desk, which faces east and south, in order that I absorb all the light and energy that flows up from the sunrise. Here, I have a “bird’s eye view” of a stoic looking holly tree straight ahead. I can watch the birds come and go from here. It is a partially guarded spot from which they can dip and swoop to the feeders by the kitchen window and back again. As the sun, if there is any, rounds the house, I move to my afternoon desk, which faces south and west. You know why.
In the deepest part of Winter, which it feels like today, I become obsessed with the birds. It isn’t just because there is a lack of other fodder for me to focus on. It is because I feel a bond and communication with them and feel responsible for helping them to survive the elements. On a morning like this, I find myself wondering how it is that they could possibly survive and how it is that they just don’t get blown away in the howling winds.
I always find it curious that in the Fall, when the air turns just so, the birds will show up on the empty feeder right outside my kitchen window and beckon me. At first I wonder to myself if it could possibly be that these birds remember that they have been fed in this precise spot and then return here and actually call to me to begin filling the feeders. I talk to them as my Mother always spoke to animals.
This morning as I donned higher boots, put on my husband’s parka and stepped out at dawn to re-fill the feeders, I felt that the birds must indeed be grateful for any possible help they can get during these weeks when the ground is completely blanketed and sealed in. They scatter quickly as I move out the door but I feel that they know exactly what I am doing and that in just a moment, their food supply will be replenished for them. They seem to chatter to each other to announce the filling and in gratitude to me for doing so. While I may spend a small fortune on seed for them, I feel this is the least I can do for these beautiful and precious little creatures.
Today it was forecasted to be -7F. I guess we have to be grateful that it is only 12F.
As Robert Frost wrote of downy flake and these woods I know, I find myself returning to his words so often now. They float inside my head. And while, I do not live in the woods, really, I have the aura of beauty surrounding me that leaves me with very indelible “pictures”.
And so, in my total insignificance, I am grateful to these magnificent creatures who return to share part of their lives with me at the side of my house. They carry with them remarkable lessons and bring me joy in the depths of the cold sheer and deadly blow.
I am happy this gorgeous male shared a few moments with me today. And, whether or not I am correct that I sense I can feel their gratitude as they celebrate their return to the full feeders, they share with me.
