Uninterpretable Purposefulness

 

Daisie and I headed out on our morning constitutional on Sunday on a new route over the ridge to the north and then south along the canyon wall. Actually, it wasn’t the arduous single-file mule trail as it may sound. One street to a second which meanders into and around every curve on this lower finger of Mount Tamalpais, silent in the dawn, emotive with the strong clean scent of the redwoods.

If there is no fence, one can look out over the downhill side, enjoying panoramic views which scour the deep green canyon walls speckled with homes, and look out over The Bay. Depending on the spot, Mount Diablo is an obvious landmark fifty miles to the east; much closer is The City, tall spires and hard corners in a generally softer landscape.

But not this morning; a fifty-foot bank of fog blocked out San Francisco. As the sun rose, steaming the morning dew from the earth and flora and roofs, the fog thickened and rose, filling the bottom of the canyon and then rising to a thousand feet. A typical beginning to a day in Mill Valley; most times, the sun will win in the end and the moisture will sparkle jewel-like on leaves and branches and windshields before evaporating, refreshing the air.

Before we left this morning, I was making a first check of my email and the headlines when I heard a thud, as though a small bough had fallen on the roof. But as my mind processed the sound, I knew before I turned my head and saw the small tuft of feathers on the window what had happened. I hoped that the bird had fallen out of sight and was lying on the ground catching it’s breath. It wasn’t. It was dead, lying on the table. I picked it up and felt the now useless warmth of its body as I cast it into the woods.

When I lived in Big Sur, a bird had flown into a glass door of my house. I picked up the tiny thang, which sat in the palm of my hand, it’s eyes spinning like the wheels of a slot machine. After a few moments, the eyes started to stabilize. The bird then looked up at me as though awakening from unconsciousness. It gave a tweet, jumped or flew up to land on my bare shoulder, where it gave another cry, this one a little stronger, before flying away.

I remembered that little bird this morning. There seems a certain fickleness about our existence; an uninterpretable purposefulness to nature. Sometimes if we haven’t been paying attention, or if we need a mid-course correction to where we are going, we might crash into an invisible wall, and survive it.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.

 

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