How do we get there from here?

This has been an interesting day at the bird feeders as well as an interesting week in "governance." In addition to the usual suspects, a Northern flicker has started feeding at the sunflower seed feeder. We most frequently have seen them in the Winter feeding on suet. A male Baltimore oriole just landed near the hummingbird / oriole feeder. Might we have had orioles nesting nearby all Summer but not coming to the nectar or grape feeders? Possible but not probable? Have orioles just arrived in the neighborhood on their way South again? Could well be!

Winter flicker

Photo by J. Harrington

We've noticed what looks like a couple of handfuls of small birds taking very short flights about the yard and driveway today. Our best guess is that they're recent fledglings of several species, building up flight muscles and learning what's good to eat, plus how to take a bath in a shallow, shrinking puddle. It's reassuring to see signs of the non-human world successfully going about its business while some of us march and bluster about, and in that process, we aggravate, and sometimes kill, and maim each other. What is the phrase "Homo sapiens" supposed to mean? Have we been overly optimistic with our binomial naming?

Actually, while too many foolish white "American" men marched about with kon-tiki torches (made in China) protesting job loss in the US -- or whatever troubled them at the moment -- real American women were making much more sense trying to get the rest of us to protect some of the common resources on which we all depend. They're doing so not with protests, but with prayers; not with marches, but with walks; not through exclusiveness, but through inclusion; not in chaos, but by following protocols. Think about the marches and protests in Charlottesville this week. Compare that destructive madness with the Nibi Water Walk along the Missouri River. That walk is expected to take about two months, from the beginning of August well into September. (As of this writing, the walkers are West of Williston, ND.)

Until we have transporters like those in the StarShip Enterprise, migration will continue to occur through time and space both. Think about the future you'd like for yourself, your family and friends, your descendants. Which do you think might be a better way of getting there, marching in protest, or walking in prayer?

                     Ghost Dance

By Sara Littlecrow-Russell

Two hundred seventy

Ghost Dancers died dreaming

That humanity would drown

In a flood of White sins.

Then the renewed earth

Would reclaim city and town,

Leaving only Ghost Dancers

And those who lived by nature’s laws.

History books say the threat is gone.

The Ghost Dance died with the ancestors—

Wovoka and his sacred dream

Were destroyed.

Each time it rains,

I go out to the sidewalk,

Where the tree roots

Have broken the concrete

Listening to the water’s whispering:

“It is coming soon.”

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