Enter, Hummingbird

(Written Saturday, Sept. 25, 2010, but kept in draft form by mistake)

My back door is open and I'm sitting at my kitchen table, reading, waking up slowly.  The day is bright and clear, the town is bustling, breakfast is half gone.  The coffee is very good.

I hear a rumbling noise, a muffled thrumming sound and my mind takes it in, considers it and compares it to other  sounds coming up from the street.  At first, it's possible I'm hearing a motorcycle engine in the distance, but it sounds too - what? - thrummy, if that's a word.  A weed whacker?  Something is making a steady beating sound.  I'm still reading the newspaper and finally look up.

There in the kitchen is a hummingbird, examining the many magnets and postcards covering the refrigerator, gently weaving back and forth a few inches, up and down an inch.  One magnet is made of pressed flowers laminated between plastic.  Many of the others are red, and the little bird is intrigued by them.  Then he comes a bit further into the kitchen, his wings drumming the air softly.  There is plenty in my kitchen that is red and attractive to a curious bird, I notice, and I hope he does not make the mistake of flying further in.

I've had brief encounters with small creatures within my own "nest" now and again, and they always stir a thrill and excitement in me.  The sense of wildness entering my domain, unbidden and unpredictable, is curious.  A raccoon peeked into one house, a scrub jay flew down a chimney, a coyote visited my vegetable garden.  The wild world, usually shy and barely seen, is out there.  I know it, I see their tracks, hear their songs, but I seldom get to see them up close, especially not arriving in my kitchen on a Saturday morning.

"Hey,  there's a hummingbird in the kitchen!"  I find myself exclaiming, wondering what will happen next.  Suddenly, the small wild thing is telling a story and I am leaning on the edge of my seat to find out about it, hope it will be okay, wonder why it took a wrong turn.

The thrumming beat of the wings intensified when the hummer sped back out the door, and it squeaked its tiny cry to the neighborhood as it flew.  Later it returned very briefly, took quick glance back at the magnets and color, zoomed away.  It was a first, being visited by a speedy little dart made of feathers.  I am half hoping he comes back and feels comfortable with our kitchen, but I don't want him to.  Wildness and self-determination by wild things, their freedom to move amidst our predictably dangerous world, is inspiring and beautiful if not wonderfully whimsical and fun.  I want them to always fly free, wander safely, out of reach of danger, original inhabitants of nature.

The Gravity of the Scene

I was rummaging around in the flower pots, my head down and my sleeves catching on the twigs and thorns on the rose bushes.  I had to squat down to reach a recalcitrant weed and it seemed gravity was working overtime when I had to stand again, but I made it.  I stood there surveying my work and heard the electronic-sounding squeaks of hummingbirds nearby.  They jetted from perch to perch, one elongated thorn with wings and a ferocious demeanor.  They are like miniature Inigo Montoyas from The Princess Bride, wrapped in iridescent feathers, challenging each other, all at 200 mph.  "I am one ounce of feathers, you took my perch, prepare to die!"

Other birds, twittering on nearby perches, looked awkward and slow in comparison to the hummers.  A female titmouse, rumpled and molty, held still as the tiny aggressors darted back and forth near her.

I went back to work weeding, pruning and then dragging the hose around to water plants and finally sweeping up.  It was steady methodical work.  Overhead, the sun was playing coyly with the pashmina-like fog wisps. They tumbled together in a very slow silent ballet.

Done with my work, I faced north from the front of the house and looked out across Monterey Bay.  The water's surface was scuffed by the onshore breeze from northwest to southeast and set the whole bay moving.   Beyond the bay, past the shreddy scarves' edges, layers of storm clouds were piling up against the hills of Watsonville and Corralitos.  All the sky, the ocean, birds, everything moved elegantly and inexorably, and I stood stock still in the middle of it all like a peg in a board, my feet rooted to the ground.

All the moving parts looked like a child's spinning lampshade painted with a diorama, but in truth I was standing on this big blue ball moving at a thousand miles an hour, the one we call Earth.  Time flattened out and space became visible.  I had a sense of the relative positions of the planets and moon and sun, and the earth revolving very rapidly, all of them locked in a dance through eternity, a rotating frenzy of molecules, matter and mass.  I, the very puny human, stood agape at it all.

Hummingbirds zapped past my head at light speed, and I imagined myself one of them, but all that sound and motion made me feel the pull of gravity under my shoes more than ever.  My legs felt stretched and my arms lifted away from my sides a bit as if weightless.  I sensed that without the glue of gravity under my feet, I'd be tumbling away into intergalactic space like a rag doll.

I looked down at my shoes, scuffed and muddy, very much on the ground.  I felt like Dorothy with her ruby slippers:   "There's no glue like gravity, there's no glue like gravity..."  A little bit of vertigo goes a long way.  I'd had a quick glimpse at the machinations of nature relative to my own position on terra firma. That's all it was, but those forces are immense, formidable and really magnificent.

Hummingbird musings

A calendar page has turned and we are in September. At last, summer is here in the Groove. As summer arrives, the leaves float lightly from the sycamores and sail across the streets, landing with a scratchy shushing sound. They whirl up again dryly as tires rush past.

It's beautiful here when it's summer/fall. Warmth so long anticipated is a lulling tonic. Riots of bougainvillea blossoms splash color against the adobes of Monterey and clapboard sides of the Victorians here in the Groove, almost too violent a color to take in. I squint sometimes when I see them, but the intensity of the colors please me.

I coddle three rose bushes in my little garden, hoping for an occasional spectacular blossom. They are very fussy and hold out for more pay; I have to hand pick insects off of them, fertilize them just so, groom them in particular ways. In contrast alyssum and Santa Barbara daisies are like Catholics; they breed prolifically and scatter themselves everywhere, requiring an occasional squirt of a hose now and then. They bloom in any soil. Unlike Catholics, who usually smell like garlic - at least the ones I know do - alyssum is as fragrant as honey.

There's a keen little hummingbird that has set up shop in a nearby Monterey pine. It aims its little needle-like beak at a distant flower bush and flies pell mell toward it like a fighter jet. Licking nectar from any flowers that have it on offer, I can't imagine the energy that's needed just to hover as its tongue gathers its fuel. Wings hum at 200 beats per minute I've heard - a blur. Hummingbirds are ferociously territorial. I wonder if they have ever thwanged themselves like darts into fences by accident. Probably not.

I was rummaging around in a potted plant a few days ago when our hummingbird decided to check me out. He flew to within three feet of my head, wings beating like mad. He moved to his left a few feet for a better view and then to his right. Maybe my skin lotion was interesting; maybe not. Rather I think it was the fact that my garden hose was on and he smelled fresh water. I felt intimidated by his rapier beak and my skin seemed very vulnerable to a stab attack if he so chose. Bored, he returned to his high perch in the pine and carried on with his territorial rapid-fire squeaks and chirps, sounding like a tiny rusty hinge up there.

Now that the sun's rays are slanting at a lower and lower angle every day and we feel her heat all day long, we are smiling more, walking less briskly, looking for hammocks in which to swing idly in the afternoon. Summer crowds are finally gone and we in our specific summer/fall groove can drink the sweet wine of patience rewarded.