A Lesson in Calm

Known as the month of Mary, May is when the fragrance of blooming Russian Olive fills the dry air here in the Rio Grande River valley. Now is the time I am wanting to live along the river where it grows in abundance.  The tiny yellow flowers that line the branches of the tree produce a pungent aroma the hummingbirds adore.  Yesterday, on the new moon, I took the late morning to follow it's sweet call and wander along the trails to the river's edge.  I noticed an elegant thin black shape in the middle of the river just south of where I found myself. Peering through my binoculars I discovered it was a black bird, a large water bird poised on a log that I assumed must be lodged in the thickness of mud of the shallow river bed.  Somewhat similar in shape to a Blue Heron, this bird had a much shorter neck and a smaller body.  Quite black against the muddy brown water, I watched it for a while from a distance and noted it's serene manner, so still, so composed.  

I felt restless by comparison, not settled, not as calm as this winged one appeared to be.  He or she was in fact, so still that I wasn't certain it was a bird, at first, but perhaps a blackened branch.  I wanted to get closer to it, so I rode my bike along the sandy trail until it started to veer away from the river, then I laid the bike down and walked west through the trees and brush until I found just the right viewing spot underneath two twinned cottonwoods, magnificent umbrellas in their new spring green leaves.  For most of an hour, I bet, I sat and watched the beautiful black one barely move on this log in the river. As I admired it, and its ability to be in stillness with the environment, the name came to me-Cormorant.  Later, checking my observation with a friend she said, yes, that sounded correct from my description.  

Looking up the spelling, I noted that originally the name is from medieval Latin meaning "sea raven".  I learned it has a voracious appetite and because of that, a cormorant has come to mean, figuratively, a person who is insatiably greedy.  But this one did not seem at all hungry, not feasting on anything at all as I admired its composed spirit.  It appeared to be complete, content and very satiated.  I left before it did. I did not get to see it dip into the water or spread its wings. but it gave me a teaching in being calm. Finding a photo of it today, I am awed by its dramatic display with wings spread and plan to go back and hopefully, see it again.  A rare treat to see a sea bird in the desert, a gift.  

I learned from Michael Dunning in a Craniosacral class that in the earliest embryonic process the heart arises from stillness, deep stillness for 48 hours-as the future heart gets impregnated with spiritual information.  The heart forms literally, above the future head and folds into the interior space of the body later.  When we are first conceived, our form, the zygote-meaning yoked- is more of a mineral than an animal, cells dividing inwardly, not expanding until we are implanted into the wall of the uterus.  Once that happens we are more plant -like than animal.  A thin membrane connects our spine to our mother before there is an umbilical cord, we are more two-dimensional than three-dimensional at this stage.  I want to entrain my heart again, to that stillness, to that calm connection to Mother Nature.

Addendum: Three days later, I travelled a little further north along the river and spent an afternoon at the water's edge. I saw three more, similiarly standing, preening on a log in the river.  And then again two more, spotted a couple days later...altogether six birds patiently waiting.