Flying Through the Thresholds

Photo copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved.

It's been a day of opposites: of warm sun and dark cold rain and wind; of frustration and irritation alternating with joy and laughter; of an entire afternoon wasted on a project that, upon completion, proved to be built upon defective raw materials that will need to be exchanged for something different, and of the transcendent transference of liftoff, watching familiar spirits take flight as they allow me to capture it.

Or not.

After a month-long absence, Nimishoomis visited today. To be clear, that is not him above, no, although that was a gift in itself: A flicker has been haunting me for days, just out of sight — calling, singing, commanding attention, yet unwilling to show himself. Until this evening, when he alighted in the top of the old cottonwood across the road, then leapt onto the winds heading westward. It is the first time I've caught a real shot of one in flight.

A magpie gave me an in-flight shot shortly thereafter, albeit from a great distance. He sprang from the top of the small twisted tree at the south fence, lifting off like a rocket, shoulders raised around his head and wings draped elegantly behind him. He is tiny in the photo, yet pure grace.

Then, of course, there was the spirit I've taken to calling Uncle Ferruginous, although he is more grandfather spirit than uncle. He appeared early in the day, but refused me a photo; tonight, he hovered repeatedly to allow me to capture two. In the second, he is centered directly in the light, his great beak peeking below the center of this tailfeathers.

All of these were messengers of joy, but not like the one whose image I didn't catch. Not only was a photo impossible, but I barely had a chance to see him racing away toward the mountains.

Nimishoomis. 

I was in the middle of feeding the dogs, the sky purple with stormclouds, when Wings suddenly pointed overhead, a smile on his face. He kept saying, "Look," and I kept asking, "What?" because my hands were full, but his expression convinced me to drop everything and turn around. "It's Grandpa!" he said, and I could hear joy in his voice, too. He said the bird came literally from nowhere, just materialized, flying directly above my head on a low flight path.

I caught the briefest of views: silvery-gray wings, white underneath.

It flew on a trajectory from west to east, toward the fenceline and the peaks. And as we watched, it vanished into thin air. It was not beyond our line of sight, not high enough to be blocked by a cloud, not yet near the fence or any other obstruction, just . . . gone. There, and then not. Less than smoke.

He has been absent, or at least invisible, for a month, and I thought he had moved on. It left an unmistakable, undeniable void. Wings says that he came for me, that he just wanted me to see him, to know that he is watching over me. 

This is a week when the lines between the worlds are thin, when thresholds and interstices are no longer solid, when the strongest spirits come and go at will, flying between and across and through. It can be a forbidding time.

Somehow, this year, it suddenly feels not merely unforbidding, but safer than the week just past.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.