Friends,
On March 18th, the last Monday of winter, we had a brief moment of summer weather. There was no rain, the thermometer peaked at 77 degrees outside, and the wind was only a whisper. It was a perfect day for sitting outside and doing nothing, which I did for a spell under the oak tree in my back yard.
When I allow myself to relax, I am prone to bouts of woolgathering, and it is a fact that the canopy of a California live oak—when regarded from a place of serene idleness, has a way of drawing a person into a meditative state marked by random thoughts and disconnected observations.
For example, after my mind had wandered over such weighty matters as the philosophy of Albert Camus, the ever-growing field of contenders for the Democratic nomination, and Mexican food, I settled on birds’ nests, and I started looking for avian domiciles in the branches of the tree.
I was particularly interested in finding a bushtit nest. I have seen the tiny little birds—they’re not much bigger than walnuts—in the yard, and last year one of their long, sock-like nests fell out of the oak tree, so I was pretty sure there were nests to be found up there, hidden in the leaves. “Hidden,” it turns out, was the right word for it: try as I might I could find no nests.
I saw birds—I even saw a pair of bushtits, chattering away in the foliage, but I didn’t see their nest, until, suddenly, one of the little birds vanished. It didn’t fly away or hop up the branch, it just disappeared. Then, just as quickly, it was back in sight again, and that’s when I realized the bird had been going in and out of the nest, which was right above me but so well camouflaged that I hadn’t seen it.
The lesson I learned is that if you want to find a hidden birds’ nest, don’t look for the nest, look for the bird. Having gathered that bit of wisdom unto myself, I went back to my undisciplined brain breathing, but not before I tried to find some kind of deeper wisdom in what I had just learned about birds and nests.
I’m writing this twenty four hours since I sat out under the oak tree in my back yard, and I still don’t know what cosmic insight can be gleaned from what I learned except for this: maybe the greater truth has less to do with finding hidden nests or watching out for birds and more to do with the importance of taking time out to sit quietly under an oak tree on a lovely day, there to let one’s mind wander in whatever direction is necessary.
God’s Peace,
Ben