Common Birds VIII - Red-winged Blackbird
Leaving the back door, I see one of my human coworkers who I’m collecting data with. Immediately, my mind is back on work, the world is silent, and I am blind. I walk to my car to pick up my monocular from the glove compartment and try to turn my attention from responsibilities. From a business standpoint, I justify my walks in terms of productivity. It’s often easier for me to find solutions to technical problems or think creatively for experiments if I break up my time with walks outside, giving my attention to the birds, earth, and air, rather than sitting at my desk and grinding away. Grinding away is just what it feels like. Personally, I need no justification for my walks, they are glorious, and I work for my walks to not become mere tools of my business. I walk for the love of walking and the love of what I might see and hear.
Today is the first truly overcast day of the week and it’s almost sticky like a summer morning. Cardinals sing their slide-whistle songs in the trees, but most prominently I hear red-winged blackbirds calling. The stream is empty, but I hear a nuthatch call in the cluster of trees that were planted in front of my office.
Today, I feel the tension between what I do and what brings me joy and fulfillment. For the most part, I like my work, especially the flexibility it gives me. But today, as work continues to encroach on my walking, I feel the obligations as real obligations. My favorite part of coming to the office is these walks where I can enjoy and be satisfied in creation and my creatureliness. Now, I wish I could just walk, have that be what I do, or better yet, stay home with my wife and cats, take care of them and the apartment, and walk from there.
On the trail, I still hear the trill of the red-winged blackbird and the songs and chips of cardinals. The pond, like the stream, is still and empty. On the wooden footbridge which bows slightly beneath me, I lean over the railing. Again, the river is perfectly still. I breathe in and out. Ecclesiastes comes to my mind, as it often does. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I first read it at fourteen. Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless, says the first verse in most English translations. Because of this the only people who think that is wise are angsty teens like I was. Otherwise, the book is dismissed as the strange outlier of nihilism in the Bible to look upon with pity. Perhaps, dismissing a book of wisdom should lead us to question our own wisdom instead. The imagery is more helpful than the translation. A chasing after wind. Wind means wind, yet also breath, and life, and spirit all at once. All we do is chasing after breath. We need, of course, life-breath, so do all we know to do. We chase after breath, and by chasing breath we lose it. Walking is not for productivity. It is for these moments when I and the river are still, and I can finally catch up with myself, my breath, my life. I red-winged blackbird is high in the tree, singing. It is here, enjoying the common and repeated day-to-day I catch my breath.
