Days and days went by and the adult red-tailed hawks attended to the nest on the red cliff in the distance. They showed a great deal of fortitude while protecting the nest in snow and wind and rain. As yet, no sign of eggs or chicks.
Then on Mother’s Day morning, white fluff moving! Oh, what a celebration.
And a week later, the stretch of tiny wings, right there on the very edge of vertical rock and sticks.
And a protective mother hawk perched while father hawk was still in the field.
I bet it is difficult to stay an egg!
“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”
—C. S. Lewis
I started thinking about eggs and offspring and realized yes, they do hatch and grow up. I know this because mine are no longer babies. In fact, they have their own opinions and nesting sites! But C. S. Lewis infers that we are all like eggs in the here and now and that got me thinking. Am I truly hatched? Even in adulthood and as a mother have I truly emerged from the shell of my beginning?
Emily Dickinson takes hatching a step further and speaks about hope and soul:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without words –
And never stops – at all –
—Emily Dickinson
Hmmm, I wondered. Not only do I question whether I’ve been fully hatched but I question how hope is getting along while being all feathery and perched in my soul . . .
Again, C. S. Lewis spoke loud and clear piping into my thoughts:
“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”
—C. S. Lewis
Okay, I said to myself, but what about the journey? The becoming? United States Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize for Poetry recipient, Richard Wilbur, wrote about this very concept from the standpoint of an Aspen Tree speaking to the Stream:
“Teach me, like you, to drink creation whole
And casting out myself, become a soul.”
—Richard Wilbur
Wow! I exclaimed loudly in my quiet thoughts, I’m onto something! Hatching, Soul, Hope, Creation—it’s the stuff of life. Get on with it! In a flash of exuberance I realized time is fleeting and I better live fully because it’s been a while since I was formed in the joining of my mother’s egg and my father’s sperm. In the here and now, I want to celebrate being fully hatched, souled, and flying the journey well.
“For Time will teach thee soon the truth,
There are no birds in last year’s nest!”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
On that note of being hatched and ever-learning, I observed not only the red-tailed hawk chicks this month but something exciting in the pines. I call them Lightbulb Trees. If you will notice, new growth has emerged on the tips of the trees in a bright green hue that looks like little fluorescent lightbulbs. On a trip my youngest son and I took a few years back, we noticed an entire mountainside lit up with these tiny new-growth lightbulbs in the pines. The lighting from the sun was simply perfect and the mountain truly appeared to be glowing with bright green lights!
In this month of May and always, much gratitude and honor to all mothers and to every person who has died in military service for our country.
Thanks for stopping by and blessings to all who search for and/or celebrate soul, hope, and wonder. ♥