Osprey Interlude

The book is a larger size paperback with good quality paper.  Not the size or weight that one would normally choose for a backpacking trip.  The cover is worn and creased, and the corners show rounding from repeated buffeting against camping equipment.  Its title is Return of the Bird Tribes by Ken Carey, published in 1988.  I purchased it used in the early nineties, at the marked-down price of $5.00.  A yellow sticker of a dove now covers the penciled price on the first page.

The subject of the book is mostly a message from the Elders of the Bird Tribes, who are angelic beings concerned with the evolution of human consciousness.  The author carefully explains in his introduction that it was written by a process of communion that is a natural byproduct of what New Age types have called “channeling.”  I have met Ken briefly at a talk in Mill Valley, and he’s an actual person with an astonishing gift of real hope for humankind’s ultimate redemption.  A multifaceted book, Return of the Bird Tribes explores the transformative impact of Native American spirituality on contemporary events.  It encompasses a history of the Bird Tribes’ presence on earth, the historical dominance and emerging decay of the “warrior tribes” that have brought us to the brink of extinction, and the promise of the return of the Bird Tribes to assist in a global reawakening and return to harmony with the earth.

The cover is what first drew me to the book.  It’s a remarkable painting by Keith Powell entitled “Shaman’s Dream” that draws your vision in and spreads it out on the wings of an eagle, on which are displayed the eyes of a large eagle’s head, with a shaman’s face depicted in its depths.  The feathers of the head radiate outward like rays of light, with a vertical, centering line of luminous yellow.  It is an image that imprints itself on the mind softly and persistently, like the face of a loved one.

This book, and the reason why it has a protective covering, are two of the most miraculous things that ever happened in my life.  It’s not just that its contents are true, and were an astonishing reading experience, because they are and they were.  There is a special energy about this book that resonates in me every time I pick it up and read a few pages.  In 1992, I was reading it all the way through for the first time, while lounging in the outrageous comfort of a small inflatable rubber dinghy on the shores of Big Bear Lake.  I alternated between floating the bright yellow dinghy along the tree-strewn, pearly jade shallows of the lake, and flopping it on a flat rock in the shade when it got too hot.

I was at the point in reading this particular book where I was hopelessly ensnared and couldn’t put it down.  Before, I had been sampling a paragraph or two and pausing to reflect on its meaning.  My eyes would naturally drift upward then to the dramatic rim of the lake, with its stark patterns of white-gray rock, green bands of scrub brush, and a brilliant azure sky that seemed to be shaving itself with the edge of the peaks.  Now I was intensely submerged in the unfolding depths of the book and its echoes in my soul, and I paused more rarely.  The keen resonance of its meaning was being absorbed by the pores of my mind like a soft fragrance.

Suddenly, a white flicker at the periphery of my vision caused me to look up and remember the lake.  My eyes needed a few seconds to adjust to the blazing light and distal focus.  At first, the floating flicker resembled a white silk scarf or a scrap of gossamer drifting lazily through the tops of the trees, getting hung up here for a bit, then snagging there, and then moving upward on a draft to perch on the tallest dead tree.  Once separated from the screening branches, I could see it was a young female osprey.  She was close enough that I could see the lines of her feathers.  I felt she was young because she was always moving, and the fact that she was hunting meant she was a female.

She was moving stealthily, effortlessly on currents of air that filtered and drifted through the white trunks and branches of the pines.  All the time she was scanning the water, cocking her head this way and that.  Probably, she had already noticed the cartoonish yellow boat with the incongruous gnome hunched inside it, and was therefore moving away from it, bit by bit.  Each time she wanted to shift position, she would simply unfurl her long, parachute wings and catch a puff of air that lifted her off her perch like a dandelion seed.  Then she would silently drift to the next perch with an absolute minimum of movement or effort, and alight with a purposeful, concentrated grace.  From time to time she’d swoop suddenly out to an exact point in a line over the water between the sun and her target, and begin the hypnotic treading of air that is characteristic of osprey.  Most every time, she would swiftly abandon her vigil after a protracted hover, and return unerringly to the spot she had last perched.

I quickly recognized the synchronicity of having a bird spirit sharing this afternoon at the lake with me.  She gave added significance to the book I was holding in my hand, and its soft worn cover and ruffled corners felt warm and comfortable in my lap, like a nesting hen.  Slowly, my attention was pulled back to the words that floated out from the pages and drifted through the branches of my mind.  I would still look up when I saw the real osprey move in the corner of my eye, and would smile knowingly with recognition and beatitude.  This rhythm continued for perhaps 20 minutes, until she had worked her way all the way around the lake – first away from me on the right, and then back towards me on the left.  She was angling for the indigo depths beneath the buttressed ledges of granite at the south end of the lake, and was approaching the invisible border where I felt she would again be repelled by my presence.

The next time I looked up, she was paused briefly at the apex of her hover; then suddenly swooped down in a blazing streak, like a shooting star falling in the water.  A tremendous splash preceded the sound by half a second, and she burst upward out of the spray like a kernel of popcorn.  Her long, propeller-like wings beat mightily, to raise from the froth the huge trout writhing in her strong yellow talons.  Her piercing cry of primal triumph split the air, the moment, and the entire lake with its exultation.  With a climactic surge of instinctive energy, she circled the south end of the lake in a spinning, glorious symphony of hosannas to the bird tribes.  I was so tremendously impressed and thankful to be in this moment, that the tingling ran up my spine to the crown of my skull, and lifted me to soar beside her in ecstatic empathy.

Sadly, the magic was fleeting, as her shrill, echoing cries drifted farther away down the outlet valley and out across the miniature emerald forest far below.  The wind came up a bit just then, and I noticed it was cooler and had the smell of rain.  Emerging from my cushioned yellow shell and blinking uncertainly into the slanting late afternoon sun, I could see the beginnings of some ominous clouds burgeoning behind the skyline like a squadron of creeping, gray dirigibles.  They were coming from the side of the lake that brings bad weather.  As I regained my sense of reality and the present moment, I noticed that the departure of the osprey seemed to have sucked all the bird sounds out of the lake basin, and only the silence of stone remained, broken by desultory, slapping waves.  It was surely going to rain!  After such an enchanting afternoon, I had no desire to sit hunched and shivering in a sopping tent, eating cold dehydrated food.  Having already planned to leave early the next morning, I quickly decided to break camp and hasten back down the trail and sleep in the car, where it probably wouldn’t rain at all.

Driven by the energy of my life-affirming spiritual experience and the very physical desire to stay dry, I rapidly struck the tent, deflated the boat, and hastily stuffed the debris of my camp into my backpack.  Heavy stuff first for the trip downhill – the wheezing, folded dinghy, blackened cooking gear, my beloved book, spidery stove, heavy clothes – followed by the lighter things on top.  My haste resulted in some leftover odds and ends, which I stuffed into a sack and carried.  The first few drops of rain spattered on my pack, as I started down the trail with long rhythmic strides that found purchase with certainty in the rock-strewn trail.  I was back at the car before I even felt trail fatigue or the blisters forming on my numbed toes.  I slept like a dead man, and it did not rain at this lower altitude.  I didn’t even need to open my pack.  With first light I was back on the highway, dreaming of a shower and going through the mental decompression of a return to civilization.

When I got home and unpacked my lumpy load, I found that things had shifted and settled quite a bit.  Liking to keep my equipment in good order for the next trip, I carefully extracted the misshapen nylon lumps and grungy aluminum clusters.  When I got to the book it was a bit twisted and somewhat worse for the wear.  In contrition for the rough ride, I lovingly straightened its cover and stiffened the corners a bit so it would be presentable enough to occupy a space of honor on my highest-level bookshelf.  It was then that I noticed the book’s cover had been etched by some unknown implement with every jolting step down the trail, until parts of the smooth printed veneer of the cover had worn off, exposing the coarse, white paper underneath.  Nearly in the center of the eagle’s forehead, a soaring, white bird with wings outstretched was carved indelibly into the image of the painting by an unseen and unerring artist.  My osprey familiar had come home with me!

This mystical image of the osprey was positioned so it was approaching the “third eye” of the eagle in Powell’s remarkable painting, and seemed about to glide over the spot of deepest contemplation and spiritual energy.  No other area of the book’s cover image was carved or damaged in any way close to the bird’s ethereal embossment.  The corners had taken a rough beating, but the new icon in the center of the painting, like the center of my consciousness during that magical afternoon at Big Bear Lake, was forever spiraling higher and higher until it merged with the vertical light that makes all things visible.

Now I keep the book in its special place, and pick it up lovingly from time to time.  As I leaf through the pages, each one with a rounded corner to match the battered book, I hear the faint echoes of a distant, soft cry, as if from a large seashell held to the ear.  I have covered the etched image of the bird and the entire outside of the book in clear plastic tape, in a vain effort to keep its integrity preserved for as long as possible.  As if I could crystallize the memory in the thing of the book.  One cannot take things on the journey beyond, but one can bring good memories.  I regret having covered the book now, for although I have conserved the memory I can no longer touch it.  I am separated from the texture and actuality of the moment by a clear plastic coating.  In my desire to keep it, to hoard it, to sacrifice its immediacy for an unknown future, I have separated it from myself.

The book is a dead, mummified thing, but my memories soar with the osprey.