As I hoisted my tripod and spotting scope up onto my shoulder, it occurred to me that it had been well over a year since I had last done so. My life had taken somewhat of a downward detour and I had ceased doing many of the things that I had for so long loved doing. They just didn’t seem important anymore – and besides, I had other more important things troubling my mind. My business had for all practical purposes failed due to uncollected customer debt, my search for more stable employment had yielded nothing but rejections, and my family life had become increasingly stressful with the progression of my daughter into her teen years and my mother into old age. Taking the time to go bird watching just seemed trivial; a waste of time.
Yet it is in the midst of such dark nights of the soul that we sometimes are granted moments of inspiration. Just the week prior I had driven my daughter to McMinnville, Oregon for a Girl Scout event during which I found myself with hours to fill between the time I dropped her off and the time I was to retrieve her. I ate lunch, walked around the town, had coffee, walked around a bit more. Finally, I decided to return to the event venue; if nothing else I could sit in the car and read until she was finished.
In driving around the enormous parking lot looking for an out-of-the way spot where it would be quiet, I noticed a curious copse of Oregon White Oak trees at the far end. As there was a large archway separating it form the parking lot, I thought it might be a small park of some sort – and if so, it might have benches well suited for reading on such a fair weathered day.
After parking the car, I grabbed my shoulder bag and strolled beneath the arch – somewhat curiously, it was emblazoned with the Boy Scout motto. Past it was indeed a delightful – and wholly devoid of people – copse of oaks through which a simple path meandered. Following it, I couldn’t help but notice the presence of woodpeckers zipping from one tree to another. As I had no binocular or other manner of optic with me, I puzzled at them for some time. They were too small for Pileated, and too large for Downy or Hairy. They were, in fact, Acorn Woodpeckers.
Toward the back of the grove, a bit off the path, I discovered a small fire pit and two fallen logs more obviously used as simple benches adjacent to it. I stopped and sat, staring up at the woodpeckers and listening to their frequent calls to one another. I began to wish I had brought a binocular with me on the trip. As the wind rustled the branches, I began to become more and more aware of calls from other birds in the area. American Robins, jays, flickers… all calls I knew perfectly well but for the past year or so had not been particularly aware of hearing.
Revelations are not experiences that can be – or perhaps even should be – communicated. They are deeply personal, tied intimately with one’s inner life, and do not lend themselves well to being intelligible to others. Suffice it to say that in the sound of the wind and the calling birds a message was heard; a message that gave me feelings of hope and renewal that had been missing from my life for far too long.
Thus, a week later as I stood at the trailhead of what had once long been my “local patch” on Easter morning, hoisting my tripod and scope onto my shoulder, I could not help but smile. What I thought was dead in me was being reborn, resurrected if you will from a place of darkness and despair to walk again along a sunlit path in the promise of renewal. At that moment, a Rufous Hummingbird zipped past just above the hedgerow and disappeared far down along the way. I raise my eyes to the sky, said merely “thank you,” and stepped forward onto the path.
