Earth's Wild Music by Kathleen Dean Moore

Author:Kathleen Dean Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781640093683
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2021-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

III. Loving Like Birds / Tree Swallows

IF I WERE A BIRD, I WOULD BE A TREE SWALLOW. THE DIET OF gnats would be worth it, to soar over water in extravagant arcs and to make love on the wing, just the lightest touch of two iridescent bodies spiraling toward the river.

I live in a college town at the confluence of two rivers that flow through a fertile valley between the Pacific Ocean and the Cascade mountain range in Oregon. The pioneers who settled here in 1845 thought they had arrived in God’s garden, unaware or uncaring that it was not divine providence but devastating smallpox plagues among the Native people that left the land so beautiful and empty.

At the first sign of the coronavirus, descendants of those settlers crowded to the forest trailheads and strode through the shadows, stopping only to breathe great gulps of fresh, green air. Those who did not flee to the forest found comfort in the long, empty expanses of beach on the Pacific coast, where westerlies lift gulls and soft rain washes the air. Just the touch of that air, that’s what people craved, just to feel its light touch, to consummate that great love. Of course, the search for the solace of nature overwhelmed the parking lots and trailheads. So authorities closed the beaches, then the parks, then the national forests, then the wildlife refuges, then the boat launches, leaving people in lonely misery, isolated from the sources of their consolation.

The people withdrew to their gardens, and oh, there have never been such gardens. At first it was flowers that people grew, an abundance of daffodils and tulips. But now kale and lettuce and peas grow abundantly between the spent blossoms, and never is kale so lovingly attended. In their gardens, people find life ongoing and deep gratitude for gifts that Earth continues to give, although her body is weary and her skin is flayed.

The gratitude is expressed in sharing, much as the Native Kalapuya people give thanks to Earth by sharing huckleberries and salmon. My neighbors share news of birds:

“Tonight you can watch a hundred Vaux’s swifts swirl around the chimney at the end of the street and, one by one, drop in for the night.”

“The chickadees are nesting in the box behind my house; come and see.”

“Who can tell me if that is a mourning dove I hear in the mornings?”

“So evenly spaced on the telephone wire, are the swallows practicing an avian sort of social distancing?”

A bouquet of tulips found its way to my front step, a bag of the first nettles, a child’s drawing—and who is to say which is the most nourishing of all these gifts? They all feed the same hunger, to be part of continuing life, to be part of growth and blooming, evidence of the great healing force of nature. They invite each of us to be subsumed into something far more powerful and enduring than any human grief. The gifts of nature tell us there is a persistence to life that no measure of insolence or greed can destroy.

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