May, Second Week

The fog enshrouds my tree and meadow world this morning in early May. Fog, the visible breath of Mother Earth, gives a long respite to all the growing things. Normally, the pine trees have to spend their daylight hours pumping liquid from the soil to their branches to sustain life. On these foggy days, the surrounding wet air saturates the pine needles. The trees take a holiday and just stand relaxed in their awesome aliveness.

Neither am I impelled to any strenuous work in our misty world. To start the day, I build a fire, then sit by its warmth to read. Probably because these days are rainy, but not particularly cold, a new pattern emerges in my writing schedule. I start the day in front of a cozy fire, reading something either informational or inspirational—usually dealing with India. Afterwards, I just drift into writing. For some reason I do not have to do any physical activity to catapult me out of my usual dull morning mind.

I seem to remain in my early morning mode all though the day as I sit on the sofa drinking tea, reading, taking notes and immersing myself in deeper thoughts. Although I note that dirty dishes are stacking up in the sink and piles of books and papers are swelling around me, I don’t seem to bother with them, remaining satisfied to keep my attention on my task.

Interestingly, a quiet mind can be dull, or it can be bright. To be able to distinguish the difference is the challenge. I can’t seem to describe exactly what the difference is. I find that the quiet bright mind is more expanded, more creative. But I find that it is not necessarily any more efficient than a dull one in dealing with ordinary tasks in the physical world.

The gray rainy weather continues for days; it's hard to believe it can be so cool in May. One morning to get my writing mind up and running, I choose a book of Emerson’s essays. Of course, I select Nature, since it is my present calling in life. Interestingly, he ends his discourse on Nature with a prod to independence. He advises the reader: “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

I can buy that! He has actually succinctly described my goal. However, I am disappointed to find out that later in life he retracted this type of statement and even criticized Thoreau, an inspiration to all of us nature-lovers. As he put it, “Thoreau wants a little of ambition in his mixture. Fault of this, instead of being the head of American engineers, he is captain of huckleberry party.” What a betrayal! Was it a reflection of his own failure to live up to the ideals of his youth? Emerson’s need to support a family must have eventually crept into his philosophy. I find it noteworthy that after the passing of over one hundred years, more people read Thoreau's Walden than the works of Emerson.

I suppose Emerson would put taking care of two baby swifts in the same category as picking huckleberries. One morning last week, I went out to welcome a gray day—a thick cloud cover with the promise of rain. As I sat sipping my tea, I became aware of the most delightful chirping sound. The baby birds must have hatched in the chimney, I surmised.

The first clue I had that a bird was building a nest in the chimney was a strange fluttering noise in the living room. Oh dear, are the ghosts back? I wondered. When I finally discerned that the sound was coming from the chimney, I got a flashlight and tried looking up in it. The chimney was so high that I couldn’t see a thing.

However, the following morning, I got the whole picture. I was awakened by a strange fluttering sound. That noise is so loud it can’t possibly be coming from the chimney, I mused in a half-asleep state. In spite of the dim light, I pushed myself out of bed to investigate. Sure enough, a chimney swift, deep navy-blue with a gray breast, was at a window—trying to escape. Usually, when a healthy bird gets caught in the house, it becomes so frightened it darts and circles around frantically even missing an open door that I am desperately trying to direct it toward. For some reason, the little swift remains huddled on the windowsill when it saw me, so I fear that she may be ill. She continues to sit very still while I close my hand around her back and wings, so I could release her. Once outside, she flies away, so appears to be okay for the moment.

Throughout the next week I watch her bringing food to the nestlings. As soon as she lands, they break into a loud chorus of gregarious chirping that lasts until she flies away. Then one evening while I am in the living room, I notice the babies’ chirping is unusually loud. When I remove the barrier that I have put up to keep the cool air from the air conditioning system from going up the chimney, I find two little baby swifts clinging to the bricks of the back wall of the fireplace.

I leave them for the night with the hope that the mother will find them in the morning and feed them. The next day I wait and watch all morning long, but she only feeds the pair that remains in the nest. From past experiences, I know that hand-feeding baby birds is time consuming and often an unsuccessful endeavor. However, I have no choice but to do my best. For several days I feed them hard-boiled egg yolks, a protein-rich substitute for their usual insect diet. They eat it without hesitation, although I have a hard time hitting their open mouths. They get so excited when I approach them with food that they jerk and wobble their heads up and down, round and round. Try as I might to hit these moving targets with the bits of yolk held in tweezers, I often miss and have to try again. How in the world does their mother manage?

From inside the hearth, I pick up a couple of eggshells that had fallen from the nest. I put them on the picnic table along with other treasures I have found recently: an eagle feather, some reptile egg shells, a bird nest. The material of the reptile shells is similar to plastic ping-pong balls, except that these shells will eventually dry and shrink up. The one-inch oblong shells may be from snakes, turtles or lizards; I have no idea which one.

One morning, I suddenly start thinking about those baby birds coming out of these little tiny shells. The little bodies of the swifts still resemble the shape of an egg yoke. The more I think about it, the more I become obsessed with thinking about it. A tiny bird has been transformed into a moving, seeing, acting creature from an egg yoke. This is not something that aligns with our normal logical reality, even though we take it for granted. I know a human birth is also a miracle, but we are hooked up to a system. The baby bird is on its own in a tiny shell—in a stew that furnishes it with feathers, beak, eyes, claws and a heart beat. Of course, these swifts were born helpless. Once I watched a dozen ducklings hatch. They were eating, swimming and walking the very first day of their lives.

Think of it. A gooey yellow yoke and slimy clear substance transformed itself into a living moving breathing swimming fluffy little duckling. I try to picture the process, step by step... but it is just too overwhelming. All day long I cannot get it off my mind. I think I even dream about the evolution process during the night. I keep thinking about it until my brain, spinning and swimming in uncharted waters, actually begins to hurt. I'm not experiencing an expansion similar to witnessing the magic of a hatching butterfly; instead, the puzzle has my mind feeling challenged overtaxed stupefied. A simple egg tells me there is something happening in this creation that is beyond my comprehension. I am just not going to be able to figure it out.

On the following weekend, my family arrives for a visit. Lattie and Justin find some bugs to vary the diet of the nestlings, but one of the swifts has almost stopped eating. Then my brother decides he will be able to climb up on the roof to place them back in the nest. As he ascends the tall ladder propped against the chimney, all of us hold our breath with no confidence that the structure is strong enough to hold his weight. However, he is successful and the mother is soon feeding all of them again.

Unfortunately, the next morning, I find one baby bird lying on the fireplace grate—it didn’t make it. A few days later the nest falls down too. The small shelf, made of twigs that seem to be glued together with a lacquer, would be able to hold eggs, but not four bobbing babies. I remember how hard it was to pull the nestlings off the chimney wall because they were clutching it so tightly with their claws. Now I realize the babies must cling to the bricks after birth and do not need the nest.

For at least another week, I hear their chirping. Then one day silence prevails. The little birds have flown out into the world. Hopefully, because of human effort, there’s one more swift out there than Mother Nature had provided for. I like being an assistant in creation.