New Year's Day, with Birds

Today, January 1st, 2020,  we took the long walk way out  on the marsh. It was a mixed-reaction kind of day - weak sun to start, almost warm, then cloudy-covers snuck in over Mt Tamalpais and congealed the sky. A damp wind cut across the limp waters,  and nudged into the ends of our sleeves, pushed in between zippers. It lifted the brimmed hat off my head, kilting it into the sedgy muddy grasses.  Several times. The air was briny and brittle. It felt like a New Years Day - cold, yet fecund, with the sense of frozen possibilities ahead, just waiting to thaw out.

We recognized a pair of Northern Harriers,  old friends from previous walks, who swoop low across the watery grasses, quartering the wide, levy-bounded fields. At the far corner of our walk, where the trail loops around and we head back toward the start, a swath of white dots:  almost twenty snowy egrets congregating, poking and pecking and high-stepping through what can only be considered half water, half mud. Although we do see a lot of egrets around here, we tend to see them one by one, as solitary stalkers and so this grouping seems unusual and striking. And yet - we are past the darkest, longest night. It has to be that time: birds starting to pair up in preparation for nesting season. This looked like was one of those group-dates youngsters are fond off, where they can peer at each other, evaluate all the options, without the burden of a one-to-one date.

Along the way, we saw three willets walking through the weeds along the bank, their drab stripey-sides out, not their stunning black and white undergarments. The last time we were out here, we had seen a flock of these pale-gray undistinguished-looking water birds that startle, dazzle, confuse with a dramatic but hidden black-and-white wing tip pattern, revealed in flight or when they they lift their wings. I so wanted to see that transformation, but refrained from tossing a stick in the water just to see them fly up.

Finches and phoebes chipped and cheeped and whistled, sparrows darted in and out of blackberry thickets and coyote mint.  The wind kept darting about too. Our talk was of the sky and the brackish water and the way Mt Tam stood revealed and covered as clouds stumbled over her sloping flanks. We mulled over what this upcoming year might be like; the way forward feels both both clear-cut and occluded at the same time.  The future seems veiled and yet right in front of our eyes; what looks drab and unassuming at first, could hide dramatic black-and-white consequences in flight. 

 
The path back to the car runs along the tide-determined creek.  A Western grebe, all royalty and sleek diving, caught our attention - we were  transfixed by the small red eye, the inherent regal grace. Further on, a pair of hooded mergansers mesmerized us -- a golden feathery mohawk crowned the drabber bronze-hued duck, while her mate stunned us with geometric black and white zig-zag patterns at the each end of a chestnut-brown body, all reflected in the water in a kind of op-art extravaganza. We shared our binoculars with two moms and kids, all of us amazed. I mean, really, Lady Gaga would be proud of the feathery costume-drama.

There is great anxiety in not knowing exactly how the next year will play out, what the next five years will be like. In that way, these years feel much like the end of the 60s, when the turmoil over the Viet Nam War, the fight-marches for Civil Rights, the riots each summer the sense of unrest and uneasiness. Things felt like they hung in the balance and yet no one could predict how it was going to play out.  We couldn't anticipate anything then and we can't really now. We have to keeping moving on, fighting the good fight, flying up in the face of injustice when things are wrong.

Meanwhile, we move forward on our own small stages. We buy houses, we go to school, we retire, we continue working; we create fabulous food, we share with friends and family, we raise kids, we engage in the discussions that illuminate and empathize. Because no matter what is happening on the big stage, these busy, spinning little stages with their music and food and funny-bird dances carry us into the future, whatever it might look like.

Western Grebe
Willets