A Shadow Moved Across the Ground, Inviting Me to Breathe.

A shadow moved across the ground, making me pause and look to the sky and remember that looking up is something we should all do more often.

A smooth-sailing hawk passed through the blue, and then another, and a third.

I wondered what those hawks think of us humans, then I quickly told myself that hawks have far more important things to think about than humans. Then I wondered, like I have so many times before, what it feels like to be in a body completely outside the human-created systems that we all suffer from: capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism, neoliberalism.

Greed.

Violence.

Hawks aren’t motivated by money and material objects and power.

Or at least the kind of power humans often seek.

They live completely outside this life that we know, and it’s impossible to know their life. So we co-exist, in a way, with these hawks, with this planet, and with these skies, but we experience worlds and lives that couldn’t be more different.

Of course we are also entangled with these hawks.

We are all affected by changing seasons, changing landscapes, deforestation, over-development, polluted air, heat, cold, extreme weather conditions. Our co-existence, then, isn’t separate but entangled.

I think about hawks a lot.

I wonder if hawks even give us any thought.

It’s kind of nice, actually, to imagine a world where humans aren’t given a thought.

Pausing to look at the sky tells my body to stop, to take a minute, take a breath. So I breathe in deep through my nose and feel the energy of the breath filling my chest, ribs, stomach, and throat.

Try that, it’s amazing. Just pause and take a long breath in through your nose, filling up every part of your torso.

Noticing that the breath didn’t really feel like it traveled below my belly button, I smile and do it again, inviting that deep inhale to find its way down through my spine and into my lower back and hips.

Try this one too, see if you can ease that breath down through your spine, into your tailbone, and invite the energy to give the inside and outside of your hips a loving hug.

Now we’re getting somewhere, I think to myself. One more try.

So I take an easier breath in this time and smile as I visualize that breath coming through and around to my lower belly. The sacral chakra energy center where we often hold onto difficult emotions and experiences.

This chakra, or energy center, can become blocked and dense easily when we don’t have practices in our lives to clear it and release energy that no longer serves our greater good.

It can also become blocked, dense, or stuck from the messages we receive about “fatness” or “thinness.” Sometimes humans get into a habit of sucking in their tummies and stopping the breath from flowing through…or even looking at their own tummies with hatred or criticism, which can also block our energy in that part of our body.

And then, finally, I look back to the sky and say thank you.

Thank you, hawk, for soaring so beautifully above me.

Thank you, sun, for shining light on the ground and allowing a silhouetted shadow to appear.

Thank you, Stephanie (yes, I thank myself) for noticing the shadow and looking up.

And thank you breath and body, for your gentle, healing powers that are available at every moment.

Now that I’m here, in my body, in this moment, I can notice other things too that I was missing entirely before, like being immersed in the sounds and sights of birds.

My ears don’t even know how or where to focus their attention with all the bird calls coming from every direction. Spatterings of clicks come from behind me on the right side, then a single long whistle comes from in front of me on the left. A gentle sweet call echoes from the distance, filling my left ear and a louder snipped-off sound comes from the distance on the right.

I challenge myself to count the distinct bird calls I can hear, knowing that I will never hear them all and will always miss so much – if not most – of what this world does every single day.

One, two, three.

Four.

Five…

Six, and maybe seven.

Is that a seventh bird call? I need to listen again, quieter and even more still in my own body/mind/spirit to be ready to hear.

Yes, that’s seven.

And after about two or three very long minutes, I hear number eight.

Eight different bird calls in this one place, at this one time, within about three quiet minutes.

Different-sized birds fly at different heights in the sky, so I watch them and think that if I squint my eyes enough, they look like the airplanes criss-crossing one another in a city near an airport.

But those aren’t airplanes, I think and smile.

They are far more beautiful and inspiring and healing than an airplane could be.

Then I think that perhaps there are so many birds here because there are no airplanes at all, only the very rare sighting of one on occasion. And perhaps I can hear more birds here because there is so little human-created noise. There are definitely some car sounds far beyond the hill, but even those are muted by the distance and the trees.

While I’m not one to want to identify different kinds of birds…

Identifying and naming non-human sentients is something humans are good at. Living in mutual harmony and awe with our earthkin is something we are bad at. I work harder on the latter and don’t give much energy to the former.

I decide to open up the Merlin Bird ID application on my smartphone, provided by Cornell University for free. I love the idea of this app, and love the idea of recording the birds I’m sitting amongst right now for CornellLab to document. Using just the Sound ID, human-given names of birds start filling up the small space on my phone.

House Finch.

Chipping Sparrow.

Red-winged Blackbird.

Ahhh, yes, that stunning beauty catches my eye every time. The beautiful red wings look like red hearts painted on the deepest black suede.

American Robin.

Northern Cardinal.

Carolina Chickadee.

Love those little chickadees and their sweet little chickadee-chickadee call.

Tufted Titmouse.

Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

Eastern Kingbird.

Northern Flicker.

Purple Martin.

Tree Swallow.

American Crow.

Then the app paused for a bit, just listening to the sounds before adding two more birds.

Eastern Phoebe. Song Sparrow.

If you’re keeping count you know that’s fifteen different bird calls in the span of less than three minutes.

Fifteen different kinds of birds with their own songs, languages, flight patterns, and lives.

I’m looking ahead of me at the Canadian Goose family of five, and above me at the very dark colored hawks, and know that the number fifteen is low and insufficient.

Anything we humans do to make sense of the more-than-human world is insufficient, just as it should be. Accepting and even being thrilled by that is the magical work we have to do on ourselves.

A shadow moved across the ground, an invitation to look up at the sky, reminding me we should all look up more often, and then something else happened. I’m out of my head.

We humans are so stinking good at getting stuck in our heads.

I’m in my body.

And we are so stinking bad at staying present in our bodies.

And I can breathe.

That breath, thank the goddesses, is there for us at every moment if we decide to look at it and follow its invitation to healing.

And I wonder if hawks think about humans and how often humans think about hawks.