A Beautiful Surprise
December 1, 2024
Tuesday morning, November 26, 2024. Cold. Temperatures in the mid-twenties (F) with a light north wind blowing. There’s a walk I particularly like on cold mornings because it is somewhat sheltered from the north wind and it takes me out to a point on the lake where I have the best view of migrating ducks. It’s a mile from my car to the lake, mostly downhill, and a mile back, mostly uphill. I took that walk on Tuesday.
There is a large robin roost nearby and I watched dozens of robins pass overhead as I walked toward the lake. The crows are always up early and as usual one of the first sounds I heard. As I rounded the first bend, three does looked up from where they were grazing. I greeted them and after a minute or two they slipped silently into the brush.
The first half of the walk is on the road and the second is on a cozy, tree-lined trail. The trees are thick enough you can’t see the lake, but I could hear the gulls and geese. As I emerge near the lake, the brush opens up and I have a great view to the west, north, and east. As I looked to the west, my heart jumped with excitement - pelicans! Thirty-one pelicans to be specific!
Pelicans look like big, white mops floating on the water, and they can be hard to see when the sun is not yet shining on those glorious white feathers. I slowed down, hoping not to scare them as they were swimming generally in my direction. I walked as quietly as I could to where I could walk through the brush and sit down on a rock.
Emerging from the brush, I looked to the east and my heart jumped again - MORE pelicans! Thirty-two more pelicans to be specific. The pelicans to the east and the pelicans to the west were swimming towards each other and set to meet right in front of me. They were moving slightly away from me to the north, but still, they were close enough I could feel their presence.
There are some birds that make me almost forget about every other bird out there and pelicans are one of them! I watched the two groups of pelicans glide quietly and gently together. They turned away from me and towards a cove on the other side of the lake. I watched the pelicans sail around the lake for a while before I let my gaze wander to take in the ducks.
The winds delivered several hundred ducks to the lake that morning, but they were a little hard to see with the mist rising into the cold air from the warmer water. There was a group of about forty buffleheads out too far for photos. A dozen common mergansers flew by as they circled the lake. Six gadwalls passed right overhead. There were plenty of mallards, scaups, mergansers, green-winged teal, and northern shovelers along with a few hundred ring-billed gulls.
I kept tabs on the pelicans, who continued to survey the lake. Their preferred location that morning might have been a spot I visit often, but it was busy with dozens of trucks and humans preparing for the fireworks display on Wednesday night. The pelicans swam that direction but decided it was too busy and kept moving to the south. I kept hoping they would come closer to me.
The pelicans sailed along the southwest edge of the lake and I noticed two eagles sitting in the tree behind them. The eagles were likely uninterested in the pelicans, but they are always interested when flocks of ducks visit the lake.
Eventually, I knew it was time to go. Alas, the pelicans had not come back in my direction. I thanked the spirits for giving me such a wonderful gift. Then, just as I started to leave, I saw another surprise lying in the water next to the rocks. A pelican feather! It was easily the largest feather I have ever seen, approximately a foot long and 2-3 inches wide. Pure white with only the faintest outline of a thin gray line near the edge at the bottom. I was so excited, I forgot to take a photo of it - and that rarely happens!
I’ve noticed recently that I’m starting to get my sense of joy and excitement back. It never left completely, but it’s been somewhat muted for a while. As that sense comes back online, I find myself experiencing the joy of these moments with more exuberance. I’m excited about the holidays for the first time in many years. I’m creating and curating bespoke gifts again for people I love. It seems the barriers I erected to keep myself from being “too excited” are cracking.
In her book, “Atlas of the Heart,” Brene Brown writes: “I love thinking of joy as “the good mood of the soul.” She also writes that joy is the most vulnerable human emotion and that many of us experience a common response she calls “foreboding joy.” She says, “When we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, joy becomes foreboding.”
I’ve had a few minutes of foreboding this week, when suddenly I feel fearful or I have to get out of bed and check to make sure I turned off the oven and locked the doors. I’ve also stopped in my tracks numerous times to smile big and exclaim, “I found a pelican feather!”
Brene goes on to say, “When we push away joy, we squander the goodness that we need to build resilience, strength, and courage.” It’s interesting that my focus has been on building resilience and now I find myself opening to joy. In some ways the timing seems strange, given the state of our world. In light of this definition, it seems absolutely perfect.
I don’t know what spiritual meaning might be ascribed to pelicans, though I’m sure search AI will be happy to provide numerous answers. For me, I can truly say that a pure white pelican feather in the water is now a symbol for childlike excitement and joy.
What do you notice about how you experience joy?
I call moments like the one you had with the pelican feather "treasure" moments (I have similar "treasure" days sometimes!), and they burst suddenly upon me and overflow my heart with so much joy that I usually exclaim out loud! Because these are such rare and precious things, I also try to remember to say thank you, and I store them up in my heart--like you did--for when you need/want a special reminder of goodness <3
Thank you so much for these gifts today, Karen!! I sometimes feel my breath catching when I see photos like these, imagining what it must feel like to have been you and experiencing them for real! Bless you for giving us these chances to view beauty we might never otherwise see!! xoxo
I find myself opening to joy a bit more lately, too, Karen. I think it might be correlated with the fact that I'm abstaining from the news and most social media. But also I have this strange hopefulness, like maybe this moment is really the dark before the dawn. Maybe it's a corner we're turning and we just can't see what's on the other side yet.