Death Comes to the Hummingbird

On one of the lazy long-houred afternoons in Vail, Colorado I sat out on the porch, reading a book. I stopped to study the window of the house: a perfect reflection of the sky. I paused to try to take a photograph, of the sky in the window, the reflection of a reader seated below. I decided not, to, though and went back to my book.

The Hummingbird saw those clouds too, but in a different way and tried to fly right into that sky. The sound started me and I looked to the deck of the porch in dismay. It was a long second or two and I watched this perfectly perfect creature arch his back sucking in a breath and literally expire.

Part fairy, part insect, part bird, I waited. Hoping for "stun" instead of "death". I wanted the bird to revive, to resurrect, but I knew. I knew because I watched it happen: soul, spirit, electricity was in the tiny body of this creature and in a moment all that was left was the body: a shell of translucent wing and green feathers: iridescence fading. A small drop of blood at the bird's beak was the last thing it would say.

I wish I could tell you we all knew the right thing to do at the right time. Edward, my ten year-old came out, fell into a "state" (he called it that) and said he needed to go inside and be sad. Baker, less outwardly impacted went on with his pool game. I didn't know what to do. I've never watched an animal (or human) die before. It was beautiful and horrifying at the same time. It was real: real life and then real death.

Yesterday I watched the brilliant documentary about Mr. Rogers: a man I spent many hours with when I was 3 and 4 and 5. At one moment toward the end of the film, part of an episode is shared about death when a small silver fish in his on-set fish tank dies. He chose to weave the real-death moment into his show: scooping up the fish and respecting it with a "proper burial" in the artificial turf outside of his TV home. It was touching. I thought about the hummingbird.

I missed the moment, and we did it in a different way. Our hummingbird's shell of a body was swept over the edge of the porch onto the earth below. I don't know what I was thinking (I wasn't). I played the scene over and over as witness to the miracle of what life is.

The next day it was gone: back into some creature's part in a great cycle of living and dying. I can only console myself that, like the sands of the Tibetan Sand Mandala, we swept that bird into paradise.

Paradise, where the glass is a mirage and tiny wings and hearts go on beating for ever. But maybe that's just a reflection, too. 

Patti Smith at Bedtime: The Mindful Family

"These Are The Words"
(from "Pope Francis: A Man of His Word" soundtrack)

Awake everyone, the dawn has come
Life is streaming from the sun
A garden blessed, the bird that sings
Nature gives us everything. 

Full Song 

I stumbled on this precious song tonight. I can't stop thinking about Patti Smith--and especially as a mindful, contemplative leader of our time. I've watched her performance at the Awards for the Nobel Laureates in honor of Bob Dylan a dozen times, if not more. If you watch Patti sing: her courage to stop and try again after losing the complicated lyrics, her commitment to get it right, her nerves: you see the artist at work when everything is at stake. If you watch the audience: they are rapt: some with mouths open, some crying: it is clearly a moment that called all to be in the moment. I wish I'd been there. 

Tonight I'm just playing "These Are the Words" a few times. Scott is reading. Edward is listening to a book. I have not seen the film yet: Pope Francis: A Man of His Word but as I study it, it appears Patti Smith wrote most of the songs for the soundtrack. "These are the Words" is just one. And to me, here on retreat, I'm hearing the message. 

Nature gives us everything. 

To the Contemplative Leader, to the Mindful Human and the Mindful Family, yes. On the Mindful Family Road trip I need four things: 

A Trail 

Water 

Good Shoes 

Breath 

Simplicity is key. And I think that's why I love Patti Smith's lyrics. They're simple. And they tell the truth. She is exactly who she is: whether in a polished soundtrack or performing in front of millions of people on live television. It's not about her: it's simple: it's about the music. Nature gives her everything she needs. She is so present in her courage it's contagious. 

Nature gives us everything. 

The Artist and The Green Apple

All he wanted to do was hike to the old apple tree in the orchard and pick an apple or three.

"Go for the ones up high" a neighbor advised us, "they're more ripe!".

We met Laura on the trail as she walked the property where our tiny house sits in the middle of the Santa Fe National Forest. When we'd seen her earlier across the pond and through the reeds, she called out "hello, neighbor!" A few minutes later she came up the hill and met us on our own hike.

"I live down by the river," she told us, "my cabin is the most...rustic structure on the property. But I've just spent a year in a teepee in the rockies, so this is heaven."

I didn't know which part of this encounter to marvel at: the tall woman with blonde choppy chin-length hair and leather tassel earrings who walked up out of the woods. Alone. Or the apple she was mindfully eating. Or the teepee, or the most rustic structure on the 150 year-old ranch we were temporarily calling home.

Edward, who knew already knew the magic of the apple tree and it's exact location proudly told her both. He was marveling, too. She told us about the ranch and how the trails weave in and around river and creek and pond. She told us she walks the trails most evenings at sunset. And in August, I bet she also eats an apple a day on the way home.

The next day after an excursion into Santa Fe, we had to rush home to have the "Laura Experience". Baker, Edward and I explored the trails, and intentionally (Edward's intention) ended up at the apple tree. He instructed me which apples to pick, based on size and color (a new expert). We took five.

Three for our "snack picnic" and two for the tiny refrigerator in the tiny house. He ran back to put the two in the fridge "for safe keeping" and returned to sit and enjoy the three "plein air".

The Green Apple: loved by Manet, Cezanne, Monet and Georgia O'Keeffe and now Edward Hofland. I told him Green Apples were to these artists the pinnacle of skill: the ultimate. He has good sense. We studied ours carefully and ate it slowly. We sat in the sun, sweat beading up on the boys' noses, loving those apples and when we were finished, we loved throwing the cores into the pond "for the fish". ("Full circle" Edward exclaimed saying something about fish manure.)

This moment was created by another moment: the meeting with Laura: the friend I will likely never see again: goddess of the ancient orchard: taking her walks and eating apples in season. We had to be there for it: to learn and see the mindful practice and to want it for ourselves.

Edward ate apple number four today on the drive to Colorado. I noticed he stored number five in the refrigerator here. This mindful ten year-old nomad packed in his treasure for another day. 

And Now I'm Here: The Mindful Roadtrip

We are on our third Mindful Family Road Trip. This is a tradition inspired by my Executive Coach, mentor and Friend Nancy Dorrier.

A Mindful Family Road trip is a practice in Being. Being in the moment. For this trip, it started off with a dinner the night before we left. I sent the boys next door to the Dollar Tree to pick out four fresh notebooks for us to use on the trip. When they returned we worked on our wishes for the trip in both destinations: Santa Fe and Vail. We also wrote our checklist of things to remember to take—everyone participates and “owns” what makes it into the car and what didn’t. We forgot our fishing pole: even with the list.

A Mindful Family Road Trip takes the road less traveled. We found this Tiny House far up the mountain from the little village of Tesuque, north of Santa Fe. To our delight, it is nested over a set of orchards lost in time. We have the valley to ourselves: two ponds with a cistern that once drafted water from the nearby river. It was and is Utopian –even covered over by time and the absence of the farmer. A network of trails take the traveler past apple tree, willow, campfire site, rocky ridge, a darting cotton tail and an old paddle board Edward immediately rehabilitated and enjoyed. It’s pretty special: not a human in sight: we are enveloped by nature, held in this nest: a perfect place to practice mindfulness and being together.

We were welcomed by a teasing thunder-lots of threat in those dramatic clouds but very little rain. The cool air was enough and we settled in with agreement it was time to meditate and do some writing. As I set the bell on my Insight Meditation Timer thunder opened our silence as well as closed it, as if to say nature was in the mindful moment with us. We sat for three minutes and then wrote for four. The topic was “meeting the Tiny House” and the prompt was “I saw the feather in the window sill”. We write by hand (the brain-to-hand connection is key to creative writing) and each of us shared our writing with another giving feedback (two to three phrases directly taken from the reader’s writing and read aloud). Each of us had precious, personal observations of our day together –memorializing what matters most. The responder allows a space for recognition and appreciation and invites careful listening.

On the second evening (enjoying a vegetarian version of Cowboy Nachos-even the cowboys are eating healthy) we made a list of all that happened yesterday. Some wrote in prose style-others listed with detail how we as humans met the day and how we were inside of that day: actions, feelings, interpretations and joys. Edward (age 10) ended his writing with “I went back to the house and listened to book, made dinner, and now I’m here”.

And now I’m here: watching the sunrise drift up over the mountain’s edge. Two boys reading, wrapped up in blankets on the floor of this tiny house. It is quiet save for the wings of a hummer and the turn of a page. This is mindfulness.

The Mindful Family Meets the Tiny House in the Canyon

I saw the feather in the windowsill: dappled in grey and white stripes.

Whose feather? Whose hand, whose eye who found it, discarded on a swirling flight over canyon and river? 

I smelled it on the trail through the orchard. The scent of memory. Hiking not far away from here when I was a girl. I knew the trail then. 

Someone planted the orchids in the pond. Someone watered the orchard and saw feathers and black beetles here: scurrying into little holes in gravel to places I cannot see. 

I sit with my questions.

Where is the trail head? Can I drink the water? 

A winged creature darts past me. Waking me up. A bug or a bird? I don't know. And I wonder about this, too. 

Kind hands. That's who. 

Kind hands made this utopia farm, and the feather and the seed pod left on the windowsill for me to find. For me to find and wonder into this place where I leave you now with a story on your windowsill.