between earth and sky
love is a kestrel learning to fly... and so many other things too!
Hello dear ones, summer has landed on the hill with an almighty, expected thump!
Let me translate that for you; summer on the hill means stolen moments from the madness of end of term reports and rehearsals and school trips in order to breathe for a few brief minutes of R&R, where possible watch the sky, the clouds and young kestrels learning to fly—love love love—man those minutes are rare, why am I never ready? Meaning, also, sharing them with you is an even bigger pleasure than usual. If indeed that is possible… so welcome, welcome, with love as always, hugs are on my to do list, they’ll arrive, but late!
Needless to say, June is flying by at hyper-speed. My birthday came and went with little to no ceremony which is just as I like it to be despite an annual feeling of celebration because well, it is isn’t it! To still be a living, breathing being at the end of another cycle of the seasons is always a miracle of luck and probably more than little lunacy in this labyrinthine life and truly, I never, ever, take it for granted.
This evening—for what feels like the first time in weeks—I am watching the young kestrels now flying the way grown-up kestrels do, the air is balmy warm again, the windows flung wide open. I take great inhale of linden scented breath—then exhale on a sigh… there are three more weeks before ‘Les Grandes Vacances’ they are the longest and hardest of the school year.
I can do this!
T’is the season to be full of excitable learning and daring feats with a strong probability of landing in a dizzy puff of feathers or worse and already in the fullest of swings this year! So much so it seems to me the excitement and daring is crazier than ever—I blame the weather which is far too hot too soon!
And, let me tell you, this malady of the month of June, this need to attempt what surely can only be described as acrobatic madness is not restricted to beings of the feathered kind!
In less than ten days I have saved countless small creatures;
two salamander from being roadkill—one smaller than my little finger who, once returned to a place I considered safe, darted into a hole only to disturb a rather flabbergasted moth1.
one humming-bird moth who landed in the water-butt believing brightly coloured petals to be still nectar filled.
one shrew with a squashed back leg—I pray you survived little one, I know you only bit me because you were so very scared.
three lizards who ventured into the sheep buckets with sides too slippy for even their sticky feet to clamber out.
a young fox unknowingly wandering straight towards the loaded double barrels of my neighbours shotgun hidden in a copse of trees was successfully redirected back down the hill.
All were heading towards far shorter lives than they should have, all were tended to until life returned to terrified lifeless limbs or sent on a safer journey, all were given gentle but stern instructions on how best they might survive subsequent mad schemes. If they were so inclined to repeat them of course!
And kestrels… good grief, they have to be the craziest young’ns around!
I am quite certain both parents were clear and precise when giving their lessons to this years three babes. Two, at least, listened, took notes and clearly were none too hasty in attempting flight. There is always one though, too eager for adventure, too curious to taste the colours of the wide, wide world outside of the nest to pay attention.
For ten days I have watched and listened to these three feathered babes, as I do every year, screaming their heads off from the nest in the gable of my home—and theirs for all the years anyone can remember. They splatter the wall with excrements and the road with pellets while learning the incredibly graceful kestrel2 art of staying alive. In other words, how to hunt insects in mid flight and small rodents on the ground without crash landing because, of course, one has to learn to fly before one can hunt for one’s lunch!
This, despite many hours studying parental manoeuvres, seems to be accomplished by trial and error, many, many crash landings resulting in a confusion of bemused dizzy bird-eyes and yet more squawking which I can only translate as, how do they do that, what the hell? it isn’t as easy as it looks!
Two mornings ago, with at least minus ten minutes to spare before leaving for classes, I watched helplessly as one such kamikaze kestrel attempted an unsuccessful inaugural flight. He landed, in a dazed fluffed up feathered thump at my feet screeching every bad word his parents had taught him. I could feel his shame.
I could also feel the rumblings of my neighbours newfangled-high-tech-green-monster with an empty trailer on the back approaching at speed.
When you live in a place with few passers by, after a few years of witnessing and listening and leaping into hedges you get to recognise the sound of each and every vehicle that passes, what is hooked up to the back and the speed it is travelling—this little fella needed to be moved, very quickly.
Regardless that with his already sharp claws and that pretty hooked beak, this very young kestrel could potentially rip a deep wound into whichever part of me he decided might be a tasty morsel for a breakfast snack because, of course, I had no gloves, I also had no time to find any. So I did what any goodhearted human—soon, also, to be run down by John Deere tractor—would have done, I scooped his tiny, terrified body up in gentle hands and moved him to safety.
He wobbled on the edge of the old cart, his face indignant, wobbled and ruffled and screeched at me again then turned his beautiful head and shiny midnight eyes towards me with what I am quite certain was a look that could only have been an resentful but grateful Thank you!
“Love permeates everything, the world is saturated with it, or is emptied of it. Always this beautiful or this bereft.”
― Anne Michaels
Briefly, I want to tell you this;
how for many days in this fast gathering summer I am limited to walking the lanes; the meadows are all filled with swaying barley beards or swaying cows bottoms—I am not sure which I love most but the bull does not love me, meaning I keep my distance. Soon the sigh in me says, soon… so I wait for the barley to be harvested, I wait for the evocative malty scent of stubble which carries with it all the ingrained memories of my youth, I wait for the cattle to be be moved to shadier, cooler pastures in the valley. Patience…
how, without moving from my chair it is possible to imagine that there are many more colours than one knows the name for while watching a summer dusk, and, how it might take too many lifetimes to think of a name for each of them but oh, how exquisite such lifetimes would be in the searching.
how I watch the elderberries ripen and hope, like last year that once they are turned to tiny black globes, a pair of golden oriole will come to feast upon them.
how I watch from this window in moments snatched like a thief from obligation, three kestrels learning to fly. How they wobble on a branch, stretch their necks, wobble again, open their wings, find balance and fly to the next branch. How, after many attempts of setting a more distant goal, they all finally make the fifty foot flight to the telegraph pole, just as their parents do. How I wish I could see their look of triumph.
…how all this wonder and beauty I am blessed with is fragmented and fractured by the horror of war, tragically clear by the many tens of thousands of innocent people who have lost their lives—mothers, fathers, children, elders. How the full human cost is so much deeper. How some truths are too entangled in grief and history to ever be understood. How holding space for the unknowable is a kind of quiet witness I feel guilty in accepting. How I carry this ache, this sorrow, this refusal to look away which is not small. How it is not passive but bearing witness as a form of resistance. It is mourning. It is remembering the humanity of the world.
how I want to tell you, again and again that my love, like my hope, is a dim but still and forever glowing light—small perhaps, but inextinguishable—how I will always pray that somewhere, someone may be finding their way by it.
From this place I love in a thousand brief coloured moments a thousand times a day, I send you forever love
Something I have loved (again) this week;
I read again this post by Jonathan Foster which is possibly my favourite ever, although it is so hard to choose!
And do not miss this breathlessly beautiful essay by Kendall Lamb on motherhood and rearing a dragon daughter and loving and believing…
Or the follow-up here or this magical essay by Emily Charlotte Powell
I caught this on video but for some reason it will not load… I’ll keep trying, maybe Notes will accept it? Or, here is a link…. I hope it works!
If you have ever seen a bird you are uncertain of the name of hovering over something invisible below, it is likely a kestrel.
Thank you for finding the time to write this Susie. The hill, and its inhabitants are fortunate to have you. Desk light is such a beautiful photo. You always manage to entrain atmosphere so well. Fortitude, for the last three weeks…
These kestrels! And all the other young'ns whose lives you've managed to save!!!
Thank you for sharing these precious moments of life with us, dear Susie, and I look forward ~ with you ~ to a long restful summer of les vacances 💚 🙏 🪶