"They appeared
over the dunes,
they skimmed the trees
and hurried on
to the sea
or some lonely pond
or wherever it is
that swans go,
urgent, immaculate
the heat of their eyes
staring down
and then away,
the thick spans
of their wings
as bright as snow,
their shoulder power
echoing
inside my own body.
How could I help but adore them?
Serious birders keep what is known as a life list. This is a record of all the birds they have positively identified. For some, it is a rather casual list, for others a testimony to their expertise. Both however, are bound by the honor code. You cannot add a bird to the list unless you have seen it with your own eyes.
Most birders also have what I like to call the 'Hall of Fame'. These are sightings or experiences in their encounters with the avian world that are especially significant to them. It might be an arresting setting, or perhaps a time when the numbers of birds or variety were unusual or abundant. I have some wonderful moments in my own hall. Woodpeckers, especially the pileated, are closest to my heart and many of my best memories are of seeing them.
Spend long with a true birder and you will soon discover there is another more important listing--what I call a 'Holy Grail' list. On it are those one or two birds they want to see very much for reasons as unique as the birder. The bird may not even be rare, it simply has an allure that the birder finds irresistible. Depending on the location or those on this list, it can take years of waiting in muddy fields, or cold dawns in frozen pastures or braving alligator infested swamps full of man eating mosquitoes before the sought after bird is finally seen. Some never get seen. My Grail list only has two at the moment. One is the American Bittern. It is a very secretive bird that prefers reedy, grassy wetland areas. Its reclusive nature makes it a challenge, but not one that with diligence I won't be able to someday, overcome. The other listing is a different story. It's the ivory billed woodpecker. If it does still exist, for there is a belief it really no longer does, the chances of my seeing any of the few left is beyond remote.
What is it about human nature that makes us believe and hope? Remember those dear lines from Emily Dickinson? "Hope is the thing with feathers/that perches in the soul/and sings the song without the words/and never stops at all." Why are we able to recognize the song even without being taught the words? We come into this world believing that we will be loved, that good things are possible, that life will work out. Even when terrible, terrible things happen to us, most of us still are able to hold on to a belief that things will and can be, better. Something in us wants to believe in the possibility of an ivory bill. There is a very real part of us deep down that knows life narrows and withers when we let go. Even if we never achieve or see what it is we seek, the act of believing and hoping in the possibility, stirs and moves us in ways nothing else can. We leap time and time again during our own personal quests; looking, searching, wondering. We may try over and over to control, to have, to touch and lock up what we think may be the song, only to discover after we have that it wasn't what we longed to hear. Even then we keep on listening and looking. It is easy to become despondent because our rational self keeps asking for proof. But no matter how loud or assertive that voice may be, for most of us, we are still able to hear even the softest strands of this elusive melody playing on. Who or what is always singing? What are the words we long to hear?
I think we may all need a Grail List. There needs to be something we long for and seek that is not touchable or requires our control but flourishes only as being known and felt. I am wondering if believing in things such as ivory bills and peace and solutions and most of all ourselves, are only stanzas of a great melody being played out in limitless versions in all our hearts. Maybe there is only one great song,and each of our lives creates some of the words. Perhaps hopefulness and belief aren't about proof and obtaining but about the possibility for love. Maybe love is the melody and our lives the struggle to let go of trying to capture it and instead sing the words we know by heart?
"How could I help but wish
that one of them might drop
a white feather
that I should have something in my hand
to tell me
that they were real?
Of course
this was foolish.
What we love, shapely and pure,
is not to be held,
but to be believed in.
And then they vanished, into the unreachable distance."
Mary Oliver, "Swans", from Evidence
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