Dead Man's Creek- March 18th, 2012

                                                                                  

      Sometimes it seems like the world comes to you.  I decided to stop at the creek near Washoe Lake at the spur of the moment and it ended up being one of the most deeply memorable experiences I've had. It was getting late and intermittently the snow would gently fall though it wasn't too cold.  I saw some Say's Phoebes briefly at the start of the trail which was a first for me.  Heading up the trail there was the familiar feeling of a gentle loneliness that I get when I'm outdoors that sometimes allows you to fool yourself into thinking that things are happening just for you.  I walked down a path through the thin band of dormant trees lining the creek into a clearing and there was a Great Horned Owl perched in the magic hour sun.  I'm not an accomplished enough photographer to convey that light onto the photograph much less to make it convey the feeling of what it's like to be alone watching the eyes of a beautiful predator in the last brittle golden light coming over the mountains.  It brings you to the forefront of your mind so hyper-attentive that you almost connect with the animal, feeling its hunger and anticipation of a night of hunting and trying to will yourself silent and motionless as you feel its unease at your own presence.  To feel at once how this bird must terrify a mouse in the night and also an echo of the submerged fear that the bird feels towards you.  Eventually some movement I made overcame his tolerance and he flew down deeper into the thicket of willows.

     I tried to circle around up the creek to find him again and as I did I heard a call that sounded something like a monkeyish chicken and began to look for what was making it.  When I got too close, the Cooper's Hawk that had been calling flew out of the willows and landed on a tall dead tree.  I was able to get to a vantage point just quick enough to get a few magic pictures (to me if no one else) of his red eyes burning with the hunt or with agitation at me as the snow glided down around him.  Fierce and restless, in a matter of seconds he was gone from the small valley.

       I crossed the creek and came back down to look for the Owl again and just happened to look over into the trees and see camouflaged there, eye-level and within 5 feet of me, a small Long-eared Owl, a species I had never seen before.  I moved too quick in raising the camera and he flew down the valley into a thicker stand of willows.  I tried to keep in mind where I thought he had landed and came down the other side of the creek and saw the Great Horned Owl again perched low in a small clearing.  I took some pictures of him puffed up and looking satisfied and comfortable but quickly went to pursue the smaller owl.  I crossed back over the creek through the original clearing where I had stood watching the owl earlier and came down the other side of the willows.  I saw him fly before I got a view of him then I continued down so far that I had mostly given up on seeing the little owl when there he was, perched along the tangled willow border and staring intently at me.  Slowly, I took some photos and edged a little closer.  His eyes widened and burned maybe with fear or maybe with anger at my trespassing on his territory and then he was gone.  I felt bad then for having invaded the world of these creatures, so beautiful as to haunt me.  It is difficult to reconcile this desire to follow --as if in pursuit of some deep, hidden current of life and knowledge just outside the borders of your own-- with the desire to remove yourself from this dwindling world that belongs to others, to preserve this mystery untouched and whole and safe from everything, to wish that trails had never been made and that this secret other world would always remain so and only known to you through the regions of your heart and mind that subtly bear the memory of a time when your kind still wholly belonged there.  It is hard sometimes to feel the fear and agitation you stir in the places where you wish you could remain and to feel the damage that you have done to the peace around you.  It makes you think of your own relief at being alone and of the fear which raptors radiate to all the smaller ones around them and you start to feel as if you know something of the life of another.
                                                                                

Grover Hot Springs State Park- June 2, 2012

   American Dipper
     Cinclus Mexicanus
       Grover Hot Springs State Park, CA

"I came late to the love of birds.  For years I saw them only as a tremor at the edge of vision.  They know suffering and joy in simple states not possible for us.  Their lives quicken and warm to a pulse our hearts can never reach.  They race to oblivion.  They are old before we have finished growing."
                     J.A. Baker- The Peregrine



          
   
      
      It feels a bit off the mark to say that something has saved you when you don't feel whole and fully together but inasmuch as I can say it, I feel that watching birds and starting to understand nature have saved me.  I have dealt with varying levels of depression throughout my life and more acutely in recent years and some of the things that depression tries to tell you is that you're not a good person, that you're a failure, and that your life is pointless and not worth much.  On the day that this photo was taken I had been hiking with Layla which is something we had started to do a few years earlier to fight against the depressive moods in each of us.  Usually and ideally, I have found that being out in the wilderness frees my mind from dark thoughts and doubt and I feel at peace and very deeply alive and connected to something like the spirit of the world, at once myself and happily unconcerned with myself.  On that day, I was unable to shake the dark feelings.  I sat in the sun on the bank of the creek and only felt a vague misery that I couldn't get out from under.  As we hiked up among the boulders on the trail above the creek I could only think of throwing myself off of them and what would happen to my body afterwards.  These feelings weren't connected with any defined thought about myself or my situation, they were just a dimness inside that wouldn't leave me.  As I saw my mood affect Layla, I felt guilty and the feelings became stronger until we were at the base of the first big waterfall on the trail and I could only sit there and stare blankly at the dirt.  We sat for what felt like a long time then I tried to write in my notebook and everything was grim thoughts about the indifference of the natural world (something about the dwindling force of the water after it goes over the falls and slowly flows out to evaporate in the desert only to have to start the cycle over again) and then Layla asked if I wanted to go back.  I said we should at least go to the top of the first falls which wasn't much farther.  I was still tangled up inside when we got there and I just stood around and realized that I hadn't even tried to take any pictures.  And then I saw something dart out of a crack in the rocks of the waterfall and fly upstream.  I was afraid that I had missed it but the bird kept coming back to a hole behind the falls.  It was a male American Dipper and I suppose that he was bringing nest materials to the female (pictured above) who would sometimes come out and look around.  They were building a home in a waterfall!  Maybe that doesn't seem amazing to everyone but it was very heartening to me to know that two very small and seemingly fragile birds were living in a waterfall!  They dove into freezing water to forage for food like it was nothing and they lived in a waterfall!   

   As I realized these things I also realized that the depressive weight had gone almost in an instant.  I don't know why exactly it left me but I wrote later in my notebook "Reborn in Two Birds" and "Thank you Thank you Thank you".  I had the thought that these birds had their place and it was in a waterfall and maybe I have a place too.  We watched the Dippers for maybe 20-30 minutes and then hiked up to where the creek ran through some flat boulders where you could sit and drift your hands and feet in the water.  I touched the smooth granite under the cold water and thought about the cycles again but this time with a tremendous sense of wonder and peace to it. I thought of two constants of stone and running water meeting for centuries.  I thought of the beauty of things able to hang on and to thrive in this turbulence.  I don't have any definite ideas of what a soul is but I felt sure that mine would sometime return to that place just as the water returned and the birds returned and I told myself that I would only have to remember that when things went dark and lifeless within me that I was still there like the stone and that I would come back to my self like the watershed, like pumping blood and flowing life-- that it was all part of the same thing and it was okay.

      And often I still feel incomplete and lost--like I'm not where I'm supposed to be.  But I can remember these events and others like them that I've had outdoors and it helps me to orient myself.  I don't know that these are very profound thoughts but I remember how sustaining they felt at the time and it was me who thought them-- just an ordinary person who can't always figure out how to navigate daily life.  That feels like a saving grace to me and that explains a little of how I feel about going into the wilderness and why I sometimes wish that I could just go on out farther into it forever.