Pelicans on a Rainy Day

The beauty of the brown pelican is the color of its underwing.  Black.  Unremarkably tan of back and upperwing, noticeably white of head, when brown pelicans flap between soars, their underwings flash eerie hints of mystery.  When they disappear on a long slow glide into the marsh grass, they send me right back to the page to ferret out more.

Another thing about them is the absolute stillness of their heads and bodies in flight, even as their wings alternate between easy pumping and long soaring.  Their heads are hunched back as if fused to their shoulders, holding their eyes steady, the better to see a fish with.   There's a lesson for a writer in their calm.  In their patient focus.

And another thing.  Their activity over the marsh does not stop in the rain.  Few other birds are visible out there in this weather,  but the pelicans carry on.  I guess if one dives into water for a living, what matter a few raindrops?  The brown pelicans of Fripp Island, S.C. are practically revising today's chapter for me.  dkm

Rue Not This Day

If not birders, they are at least respecters of the natural world, the older couple that stopped in their tracks today when they saw two great egrets light a good distance ahead of them on the boardwalk. They were crossing the marsh on Fripp Island, where I am visiting for another writing retreat.  From my writing house, I happened to be watching the egrets through the binoculars when the couple came into view.  They are people I'm sure I would like.

Everything about their standing still there was a measure of love.  Their stooped posture, their slow progress halted, and the way they supported each other in the act of not disturbing the egrets, did for me what Robert Frost's dust of snow must have done for him when he wrote:

"The way a crow shook down on me,
The dust of snow from a hemlock tree,
Has given my heart a change of mood,
And saved some part of a day I had rued."

The couple did not continue on the path until a third egret flew over, and the two on the banister joined it in flight. I had rued this day for not getting any of the work I came to do done.  The couple and the egrets changed everything.  dkm