Life Lessons from the Pelicans: Courage and Delight (and yikes) Vulnerability
Another eternal gift from Life with Tom
Have I mentioned that Tom loved birds?
When we began seeing each other after he moved back from Dubai, he was appalled that I didn’t have a bird feeder in my little backyard, and he remedied the situation post-haste.
Suddenly we had bluejays and cardinals and sparrows and mockingbirds fussing at the feeders and splashing in the bird bath (Oh, they need a bird bath! He was right, and they provided endless comical entertainment.)
Tom taught me, by his enthusiasm for and loyalty to these feathered wonders, to notice the birds, to learn a little about them, to do my part to make sure we never ran out of seeds or peanuts or mealworms or millet or whatever was on the seasonal menu.
On our first visit to the lowcountry, the spring after we married, we walked the beach at Hunting Island State Park. Tom gazed out over the water in delight. Pelicans are the best birds, he proclaimed.
(Last year I read an entry in his beat-up old journal of quotes, where he’d often record something he’d heard or read and wanted to remember. Or sometimes it was an idea he’d had or a question he was pondering. There are hundreds of entries. Anyway, he’d made this entry about pelicans: Pelicans are the best. Strong. And they look like they’re having fun.)
When we eventually made the South Carolina lowcountry our home, Tom’s affinity to – and appreciation for – the birds soared ever higher. A big feeder in the back yard. Bluebirds and chickadees and wrens and cardinals and titmouses and sometimes, when we were lucky, a painted bunting. Hummingbirds. Binoculars near the windows and in the car. Sibley's Field Guide to the Birds of North America at the ready.
We watched herons (Great Blues and Little Blues and Tri-Colored and Green) and egrets (Snowy and White) and wood storks and ahingas and cormorants and buffleheads (what’s not to love about a cute duck named Bufflehead?) and hawks and woodpeckers and Bald Eagles and buzzards and kingfishers and osprey, and he could show you so many more. And out on the beaches we’d see the gulls and willets and sanderlings and oyster catchers. Even the gorgeous and improbably elegant Roseate Spoonbills.
And the pelicans. Tom’s affection for the big brown pelican was contagious.
We’d watch them fly single file along the length of the beach late in the day, going to roost. Tom liked to count them, sometimes 100 or more, gliding along.
I liked to watch them over the water, fishing.
I like their style, their courage, their all-in commitment. Here’s how I described it, through the eyes of Robert Smalls, in Trouble the Water:
Everything changes with the rise and fall of the tides. In these lowcountry rivers, in the marshes and tidal creeks that feed them, the tides rise and fall as much as ten feet, twice every day. At high tide the river is, of course, at its broadest, a half-mile across, and sometimes the dolphin come to play.
It’s deep enough, at high tide, for the pelicans to fish, and they do. They open their strong wings, and they glide, glide, glide — usually two or three together, they glide low over the water, so low that you think the tip of that powerhouse of a wing will catch on the water, but it doesn’t.
And when the bird finds a fish — does he see it? does he sense it? — when he knows there’s a fish he folds his wings and dives. Straight down; he plunges; he’s all in, that huge long dish of a beak breaking the water, and down he goes. He dives, he disappears.
And just when you wonder, Where is he? — up he comes, and he flips his head way back, tossing the fish from his beak down his hungry throat, salty and squirming. And he rises on his big dark wings, soars again, fueled by the success of his headlong dive.
The pelicans soar and dive, and when the tide recedes, they move on too, further out, to deeper water.
Soaring and diving. Moving on to deeper water. Living in the fullness of being exactly who and what it’s created to be: the big strong winged beast that it is. If I get to choose a spirit bird, I’ll take the pelican.
A little more from Trouble the Water:
As the tide goes out, it slowly, steadily, silently reveals the salt grasses, and then the life beneath — crabs and crawfish, snakes and flounders and oysters. Before lowest tide, the egrets come, shining white and elegant, and they stand, so still, on their long yellow legs, waiting, waiting, then a step or a bend of the neck, just barely, till they make their lightening strike on a fish, a little bait fish. They swallow quick, nearly imperceptibly, already stalking the next bite.
Overhead, red-shouldered hawks rise high, in great circles, not so far out over the water but at the tide’s edge, where the egrets and other shorebirds are distracted by their own appetites.
Sometimes on the path from the house to the pier, I see white feathers scattered, or maybe a single yellow leg, or a head with its bright amber eye frozen open, wondering Where did that come from?
Every dawn brings a new day, and every new day brings a gift and a challenge, a revelation and a mystery. The tides rise and fall, ebb and flow, and a day passes, a season, a year, a lifetime.
Ah, to be who we’re made to be! To soar, to dive, to throw oneself into the journey. To try and fail. To try and succeed. To try and discover and learn and experience and feel. To plunge in.
To give ourselves completely to the moment, the work, the wonder, the awe, the awful, the broken and beautiful gift of life.
To live and to love. Completely. All in. Is this asking too much of myself? Am I willing to find out?
Where will you soar today? Where will you dive? Where will you find the deeper waters and plunge into your next glorious moment?
I love these gifts from Tom and will look at every pelican a little differently. Thank you for these thought provoking stories.