Broken Wing

by Budbill, David; Saaf, Donald;

  As night fell and the temperature did, too, soon it was colder on the porch than it was inside the freezer, where it was only zero, so I emptied out the freezer and put the contents out on the porch. When I had the freezer defrosted, I brought the frozen food in from the porch and I was all done before I went to bed.

  In the process of cleaning and rearranging the frozen food, I came upon numerous things I wanted to throw away: partial loaves of bread, freezer-burned old hamburger and hot-dog buns from so long ago I couldn’t remember when, some chunks of ancient, dehydrated, unidentifiable cheese, and so on. I had a washtub-full before I was done.

  I took the discards out to the garden. It was a cloudless night. It’s always cloudless on a night as cold as last night.

  I threw these freezer discards onto the garden, where I throw all my kitchen scraps and other compostable materials all winter long. Often, deer come out of the softwood trees into the garden under the cover of overcast darkness, or under the full moon and across the glittering snow to eat what’s there. What they don’t eat rots back into soil in the spring.

  Before I begin my story, I’ve also got to tell you that the ravens around here live high up in the highest trees, on the highest peaks in the mountains to the east of where I am. Even though my place is about two thousand feet off the valley floor five miles down the road from here, I’m still only at the bottom of an open bowl, the sides of which are mountains rising all around. And in those mountains, to the east of here, is where the ravens live.

  Now. To my story. You may not believe what I am about to tell you, but I want to tell it to you anyway.

  This morning, as I drank my tea and watched out the window toward the garden where I’d thrown the freezer scraps, I saw a most amazing and inspiring sight.

  Two ravens appeared, circling above the garden. Lower and lower over the garden they descended, circling, circling, coming in for a landing. Then—bump, bump—down onto the snow.

  These birds are huge. They are so much bigger than crows, and they have big and not-at-all-crow-like beaks. And they have shoulders—actual shoulders, or they at least look like shoulders—like a person’s, not a crow’s, or like other smaller birds—but more like an eagle’s.

  The two ravens began immediately to walk around, taking their big, humorous, gawking steps, looking the situation over, their heads and shoulders bobbing back and forth. They walked to and fro, inspecting the new additions to the scraps lying on the snow. Then they set to work, and in less than an hour, these two ravens had hauled off to their secret aeries in the mountains to the east everything I had dumped out there.

  They worked, they hauled, they went back and forth, attending to nothing but their chore. They ate nothing during this time; they worked and hauled and did not rest. And they worked cooperatively, even though they were taking what they took in different directions, or so it seemed. One rose and went through the draw below the garden and banked to the right and off toward the mountains to the east. The other rose and flew down through the draw below the garden and banked to the left and off toward the mountains to the east. Were they going to different places? To different secret stashes? Different hideouts? Or were they both headed for the same place from two different directions?

  At first, they came and went together, both arriving and leaving at the same time. While they were both there together in the garden, sorting through the various kinds of breads, these two ravens never once quarreled with each other. Blue jays or grosbeaks in this situation would spend more time arguing with each other over who got what than they’d spend getting it.

  At first, the pieces were so large they couldn’t fly off with them. You know how hamburger buns come four or six all baked together in one piece, so that you have to pull them apart. They couldn’t haul off that many, that big a single piece all at once, so they set to reducing them to a manageable size, which they did by pecking and banging at them and breaking apart the hamburger and hot-dog buns until they were a size appropriate for hauling away, something they could get up into the air with and fly away.

  And their flight pattern for takeoff was always in the same direction, always the same way of leaving: they took off into the wind, and their return was in the same direction each time, also. They’d come in, circle a few times, lower with each circle, their legs and feet out, exactly like an airplane’s landing gear, and then—bump, bump—they were down on the snow, and back to sorting through the breads.

  I tell you, we had an airport here this morning. Slowly, their flight schedules separated, so that they were coming and going at different times. Occasionally, one raven got stacked up above the other, and had to circle for a moment while the other landed before he could make his final approach.

  And then, when they had hauled off all the larger pieces, they set upon the smaller pieces, one slice of bread at a time—but right away, after the first takeoff with one of those single slices, they knew it was too light a load, and they circled back and dropped down again, knowing that a trip of the distance they were making was not worth it for only a single slice of bread. For a short while, each bird picked up a single piece of bread, then put it down, then picked up another, as if they were looking for those now-gone, heavier, larger pieces. For a moment, they paused, as if confused or thinking. Then I saw something I have never seen before and don’t think I’ll ever see again.

  The two birds, each of them—I saw this, as I was watching them through binoculars—began to put one slice of bread on top of another, and another on top of those two, and so forth until they had made a stack of three or more slices, which they then, with some considerable effort, got their beaks around and flew off with. They had figured out that if they stacked the slices up, they could fly off with more than one slice at a time!

  This hauling out loaded and coming back empty went on until the job was done. When it started, there was a considerable pile of bread out there, and when they were done, there was no bread whatsoever visible in the snow.

  With their work done, both birds came back and ate something—maybe the cheese, maybe scraps of bread, it was impossible to see exactly what—but they ate as if, with the job done, they could now relax, have a beer, eat some dinner and hang out for a little while. They ate some, and visited some, right there in the garden; then they rose up one more time, this time together, and together flew away.

  Howard, who could be luckier than I am? How could I be so fortunate? To live in this place with neighbors such as these, to be in their lives and they in mine, to make a community between us, to share this place with them—what could be better than that?

  And this afternoon, when I snowshoe out through the woods off toward the eastern mountains, will two of the ravens who invariably come croaking over to see what I am doing, to see what’s going on, will two of them be the bread delivery guys? How could I be so blessed to be alive in such a place?

  I think that’s it for now, except to say I’ll write to you again sometime soon, and tell you about this wounded rusty blackbird who has been hanging around here all winter. I call him Broken Wing. It’s quite a story. But that is for another time. For now, I hope that you are well and staying warm.

  Your friend,

  5. THIS TIME TO WATCH AND WONDER

  The Man’s attentive and concerned involvement with Broken Wing continued throughout December and into the darkest and coldest time of the winter, while at the same time, he learned to step back, distance himself, from the little bird’s struggle to survive.

  While it was indeed the darkest and the coldest time, the center of winter, it was also, to The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains, the brightest and best time of the year. The snowbanks along the sides of the road grew higher and higher, and the mercury in the thermometer dropped lower and lower—some nights down to 25 or 35 or even 40 degrees below zero—and on those nights, the blue-black dome of heaven revealed a myriad of constellations, across which flowed that dense river of stars people call the Milky Way. And if the s
ky was that clear at night, then usually the days, even though they were short, were brilliant, also. Light flooded through the windows of his little house and filled The Man’s days with an intense clarity. Oh, how The Man loved these days of deep snow, sharp, stinging cold, brilliant blue skies and blinding white light.

  The intense cold and deep snow isolated The Man and his bird friends from the outside world. This made The Man happy, not fearful or sad. The woodshed had ample wood for the wood stove; he could stay warm through the coldest time, and there was plenty of food for both himself and his feathered friends. The Man felt as though he and his bird friends were cut off from the rest of the world, hidden in a secret place far toward the interior of a strange land of cold and snow, and these notions made The Man happy. The insularity and solitude that these winter days brought filled The Man with an odd and quiet joy, and because of the isolation and remove of these deep winter days, The Man knew a kind of relaxation during this time that he knew at no other time of the year. He enjoyed himself and the short days, the long nights, and the world around him with a renewed, intensified, and quiet pleasure.

  The sameness of these days, the cycling of light and dark, blended as the days passed one into the other, following each other seamlessly except for an occasional storm that came to add another foot of snow to the already snowy landscape. In the sameness of these days, The Man found not only pleasure, but greater focus and an intense passion, as well; for now, he could attend to his inner thoughts and to the endless turning of day into night—in other words, both his inner and the outer weather—and, of course, to the birds he loved so much, who kept him company just outside his windows.

  In this time of pensive reflection, this time to watch and wonder, full of stillness and light, The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains one day sat down to write another letter.

  Dear Howard,

  That time of darkness and light, cold and emptiness is here. I want to tell you about what happened yesterday. Another bird story.

  I got up before sunrise—which isn’t very hard this time of year, since the sun doesn’t come up around here until well after 7:30—and went about my morning chores. I started a fire in the stove, put the water on to boil, went to the bathroom and peed, brushed my nappy hair, washed my face, and brushed my teeth. Details! Details are important! When the water boiled, I made a pot of tea.

  Sometimes, on an especially cold winter morning, I like to get back into bed with my tea and not stand at the window. While the fire warms the house, I drink my hot tea under the warm covers, and I watch out the back window to a different birdfeeder and wait for the dawn.

  When dawn came yesterday, or just before the dawn, when the morning light had begun to overcome the darkness, a single chickadee appeared at the feeder and began her breakfast. In less than ten seconds, a dozen of her brothers and sisters and cousins were at the feeder, also.

  This morning, as I watched the little birds, I wondered at the way they always seem to arrive together in a group, or very nearly. I know chickadees don’t sleep together, but rather roost, each to him or herself. How, then, did they all get to the feeders at just about the same time? Is someone the leader? Does she wake up the others? Does she sing a few notes? Do they “sense” the dawn while their heads are still tucked in the warmth and absolute dark of the down beneath a wing? Do they all get hungry at exactly the same time? How do they all know to get up and come to breakfast together? Are they simply social creatures who enjoy each other’s company, and would never think of eating breakfast alone? And where does that social, collective impulse, this ability to act and be together, come from? These questions got me to wondering about other kinds of birds.

  Lately, in the afternoons, there has been a large flock of redpolls—in other winters, it might be a flock of pine siskins—sometimes as many as fifty, pecking and scratching across the surface of the snow beneath the feeders, finding whatever it is they find in the husks and hulls and refuse from the feeders above. They look, for all the world, like a flock of tiny chickens as they hunt and peck and bob—but then, so un-chicken-like, suddenly—away they all go, all together in perfect unison, up into a nearby tree.

  Sometimes, this upward flight has an obvious cause, like a threat from an approaching shrike or the yap of a dog; but often, there is no apparent cause for this flawless, unified and simultaneous rising up together. How does that happen? How do they do that?

  I’ve often seen the same thing driving down a wintertime dirt road, as snow buntings who have been pecking along the surface of the road gathering sand and gravel for their gizzards get up and blow away in a swirl, as if they were a little bunch of dry leaves caught in a dust devil.

  Much larger birds do this, also—like the wintertime flocks of evening grosbeaks who visit the dooryard feeders and who can, it seems at will, display this perfect-unison takeoff from the branches of an apple tree. And in the spring, large flocks of blackbirds, starlings and grackles and red-winged blackbirds, literally fill up the naked branches of a poplar tree—hundreds of birds together in one flock—and then, suddenly and simultaneously, all lift off and exit at exactly the same time, as if all these birds were really one bird with many wings.

  And, in a way, more amazing is the same phenomenon among fish. Many times I’ve seen huge schools of fish, sometimes thousands of individuals in one school, moving together this way and that, up and down and away, waving back and forth like a fan, like a relaxed hand, in the water; again, as if these thousands of fish were a single individual.

  In all of these examples, the group moves together, simultaneously, without a leader—or so it seems.

  How do they do that? Is it that they have some kind of collective mind or soul that lives outside each individual body? And if this mind-soul does live outside, away from, each individual, if it lives in the space between the individuals of the group as a whole—whether it is a flock of birds or a school of fish—and if this is the consciousness of no particular individual, but rather the consciousness of all, of the group—if all of that, then: are these individuals not really individuals, but only parts of a larger individual? Are they only the arms and legs and fingers, fins and wings of a bigger individual called the flock or the school?

  Can it be that the mind-soul of this larger individual really does exist in the empty space among and between the members of the flock, yet controls the entire flock from that empty space?

  And how can these birds be individuals one minute, sitting on a shelf feeder, pecking open a single sunflower seed and arguing, fighting with each other; and in the next moment, lose, or give up, their individuality to the group, to that larger mind-soul, that bigger individual called the flock? How can they do that?

  Could I, could you, give up my, your, own individual self to a larger flock of humans, and if you or I did that, what would that be like? I’m not sure about you, but I am, I fear, too much the solitary individual to ever be able to do such a thing.

  What I’m talking about is why I’m so attached to Broken Wing, my rusty blackbird friend. As my bird book says: a secretive and solitary bird—they seldom occur in very large flocks, and do not, as a rule, associate with red-winged blackbirds or grackles. We are two of a kind, he and I. Both of us cast adrift on this white and foreign sea. And, well, as you know, birds of a feather flock together, even if only to remain apart. Another loner, like me. Which is the problem. He and I are loners, and yet we’re both also more than that.

  Each bird is an individual first, and a member of a flock second, just as you and I are. Yet some individuals are more inclined to be members of flocks, like grackles; or like you, Howard, living there surrounded by others of your, and our, kind, while some individuals, like Broken Wing and I, for whatever reasons cause us to be that way, are more solitary and less inclined to be members of a group or flock.

  Yet now that I say that, I know that although it’s true, it’s also not true. You and I both know full well that each and every single bird or fish does not
give up its individuality to the group, at least not all the time. Rather, I think what they do and how they move so perfectly in unison together is not by abandoning their individuality, but rather by some kind of higher form of communication within this group of individuals. And this higher form of communication is something most, almost all, human beings never experience.

  But you and I, Howard, have experienced it. I know you already know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about when we used to play music together, you and I and our friends.

  I think birds in flocks are like we used to be, when we played together, how we could jump into a tune and play it—without any discussion before we began of what we were going to do—because we all could communicate so well with each other on our instruments, we all understood each other so well musically, that there was no need to talk.

  And once we really took off and entered that other world—call it the Tone World, which is what William calls it—once we were in the Tone World, there really was some kind of collective personality that took over, that made us one being, a flock of four or five, like the birds and the fish; and we, I’m sure, appeared to those listening to us to be a single, new and different person, a single instrument playing—which, of course, is exactly what we were.

  And yet none of us ever gave up playing our own individual instruments or playing out of our own personal and individual lives, and because of that, each of us played our own individual instruments out of some deep place in our own personal and individual selves. We were, each one of us, absolutely different from the other, yet all of us, while we were playing together, made together a single song. We made a new and different person while we played together. We were, at those moments, just like the birds and the fishes, don’t you think?