The Color Blue
Bluebirds. People had been seeing fewer, and fewer, then none….
A swath of cerulean blue. Early spring snow or final melting, the air would have been alive with their bodies piercing the skies, one with the sapphire breeze that protects and remembers. They would come, not like thunder, more like summer’s promise. Along the spine of an ordinary blue horizon, the sunrise shedding light over bluebird migrations from the south. Bringing song.
There are few other blue celebrations, ones that bring the sky to earth. In Persian culture, it directly translates to victorious. A blessing and protector. In Egypt, a blessing of fertility a fragment of heaven. Apache, a piece of sky that tumbles down in important moments. I heard a story from my mother about how the sky gave the earth turquoise to remember him, then moved through the atmosphere like a great exhale and became our breath. He still holds her each day as promised. A fierce softness, as she holds everything sacred. Reflecting him back to himself - sun, cloud, and star shapes in her swirling skirts of ocean.
Other blues touch earth - feather, fruit, base of flame. Birds the color of spirit, like a streak of lightning, an anomaly of soul. How could they be real? I wanted them near, to nest in my ribcage, feel them open and close their tiny wings.
I attempted to buy 80 acres under the monumental cup of sky about 10 miles from Winthrop, Washington. It was the years when banks were folding faster than card games.
My broker said in the middle of the Winthrop deal, I don’t think we can do 80 acres. Let’s do 40. Made an offer on 40 in Tonasket…. Then 20…. until Fannie Mae folded her hands over her chest in a gesture of final rest.
My friend Miles and I on dusty roads with a backwoods realtor meeting us somewhere between nowhere and even God doesn’t know this place is here.
I never thought owning anything was a good idea, too many ruptures in the giving. Both of my mothers taught me to ask permission, to respect both the invisible and visible beings who would inherit our actions.
I planted seeds each place. Asking permission, making offerings. Confident I would immediately know the land was meant to be if it nested in my being. I have slept on a rock by the Salish Sea. A thin mattress with no sheets. Cement and concrete. Laundry rooms and closets.
This place came to me. As I stood in the snow past my knees, I opened two tangerines, they bled their shimmering brightness onto the snow. Two ravens began to circle, calling out… this is the place.
I now steward 5 acres sheltered by Tamarack Ridge in a place called Paradise. On some land management maps, this place is known as the valley of ascension. A road of switchback curves into the mountains that reach halfway through Montana, wonder lands you into a world of evergreens that blaze tender with the seasons. Thirty-five minutes to nowhere. and a handful of hours from the Sapphire Mountain Range.
Two Bears Road, this had to be good… all big sky from here.
We were distant from everything except the two-story barn and the hunters’ cabin built in the shape of a honey cell with a wood stove the size of a fist that had you begging for the icehouse in an hour.
The bullfrogs were a rupture in the serenity. I remember holding out my phone and asking my mother, “What is this sound?” She knew right away. Their moans so loud they kept me awake in their search for love. In daylight they could snatch small birds right out of the air. I asked them to chill and stick to bugs and minnows so this tiny ecosystem could thrive. I told them they could stay as long as there were still tiny tree frogs on the lily pads, frogs native to this place. Green, bronze, and leopard ones and no eating of birds. They’ve kept this agreement these 20 years. The pond now sings with the Sierran Treefrog and Boreal Chorus frog behind the octagonal house down the slope of hill overlooking their waterlily sunning pads.
The original cabin was built with lumber milled on the land, from the land. salvaged from teardowns of local schools in the hamlets down the mountains where pines would travel from roots through a hole in the sky. The ghosts of trees were watching us. They were paying attention to what we were doing and not doing, and I loved them.
I wanted to return much of the 5 acres to its tamarack, elderberry, ponderosa, red and black willow, rosa rugosa, mullein, hypericum, lamb’s quarters, and balsam origins.
But especially to return the bluebirds… I wanted the blue…. Bluebirds specifically. I had seen grey jays, stellar jays, and blue jays. King birds, thrush and hawks, from Washington to Kansas City. But bluebirds were happiness and I had read their numbers were declining. They weren’t being seen in the places they used to nest, not reproducing, not to be seen anywhere.
I went out to talk with the land, a rambling conversation to the ear of my friends saying I would be so grateful if the bluebirds would come and nest here, if they would return and make their families, that their numbers could increase and their food increase, all in the right amount, for balance.
I have always wanted a bird sanctuary on every acre of land, in the city, too! With the frogs, snakes, cougars, and wolves. A way for real life to travel in the world. A corridor of realness.
When I spoke with my neighbors, everything was “used to be”.
“Well, there used to be a lot of grouse over there, we used to have wild turkeys over here, and those bluebirds don’t come around anymore.”
I read that bluebirds require a specific sized opening in their nests to keep out the starling and sparrows. I measured added dozens of bird houses to every tree, stump, and snag, till all buildings were surrounded. I fertilized and moisturized the land, put up feeders with a wild bird seed mix. Defended and protected every life on the land…. no insecticide here. A no kill universal law for insects, humans, and animals alike. My prayers for bird sanctuary were answered mostly by nuthatch, downy woodpecker, sapsuckers, and the subtle dignity of bohemian waxwings. But my heart ached for the bluebird….
The mountain swallows came with their sharp wings, split tails and riveting charm. They managed to fill up all 27 birdhouses. Over the pond where they gathered and dispersed in constant aerial displays of dragonfly and water bug catching. Diving, catching, feeding. They were a kind of blue, like the Salish Sea with a green glaze and a rust belly. They always returned to the place they were born, year after year. Thriving.
Three years of walking by the tiny hunters’ cabin between the house and the barn, held by the gnarled arms of the golden plum and sour cherry tree. The meadow in its colorful spring conversation between lupine blooms, ponderosas, and the tiny yellow glacier lilies…
A flash of blue, like cashew fruit or delphinium, how you might feel if you could see an angel or a soul.
Is it true? My heart a hummingbird, my body a paralysis of beauty.A bluebird, a scorching stainless blue not the pale sky but the color of an acetylene torch. We have contact. A mountain bluebird.
Between conversations with pine trees, osprey and Kingfisher, surround sound sunsets. Hummingbirds in levitation eye to eye. Stewarding bats out of their accidental indoor visits and listening to frog harmonies.
When the birds were declining in number, bluebird man (Al Larson) went about making homes for them. Banding and housing 31,400 bluebirds each house numbered with its own rural address. Counting all the causes for their decrease in numbers from pesticides and poisoning to not enough nesting sites. he became an architect of their safety.
Some things have been extirpated; the grizzlies. Some reintroduced; wolves.
The day when the box built to the exact specifications for a bluebird’s well-being, held not one, but two, and then four I felt the world and I in a simple profound conversation like any important relationship. Gauge impact, respect boundaries, shut up once in a while. The earth answers prayers. A voice can be heard; bluebirds sing their few, few, few and they become many populating the land that belongs to them. If you want something, ask. The answer may be a song or a swath of blue that reflects returning, returning always.
First photo from Nine Muses taken with my iphone
Second photo from istockphoto