On the autumn equinox last year, I found something remarkable while taking the dog on a routine morning walk. September 22: the day was both warm and crisp, which translates in the South Carolina lowcountry to mean no humidity. Perfect weather for the equinox, a day half light and half dark.
I wandered slowly down the sidewalk and let my dog engage in her customary sniffing. I observed the world around me. Occasionally, a butterfly floated by. The leaves on the trees around me reflected a tired green, getting ready for the big “let go” that autumn instructs. I glanced at the ground by my feet and something caught my eye. Grey, round, unusual—what was it? I bent down to inspect and noticed two hollowed out places for eyes, a black pointy beak. A bird skull! It sat perfectly intact; no feathers strewn about or anything else resembling the carnage of a bird. Just a perfectly smooth and fragile skull. I picked it up. It fit delicately in the palm of my hand.
I carried it a few feet and then placed it on a fence post where I felt it would be kept safe from being crushed underfoot. Then I continued on my walk as if it was a normal day , la-di-da, not recognizing that I had found the most extraordinary thing. (Consider a bird skull, on the equinox! Macabre on an auspicious day!) But no, I wasn’t paying attention and had things to do.
Back at the house, I settled in and opened my computer to write. I was working on a personal project, recording all my memories of my grandparents and their farm in North Georgia and my time spent there as a child. Memories floated in like magic as I wrote. I thought back to the unusual packages that my grandfather enjoyed sending in the mail. He was a wildlife biologist and always enjoyed educating his grandkids by engaging our curiosity. The packages he sent in the mail were his own unique brand of communication.
I typed up some of the things I remembered receiving: Nancy Drew books, field guides, seeds, a butterfly net, and small animal skulls.
I stopped at that last one, astonished. My mind blinked back to the bird skull I had found that morning. There are no coincidences. The past merged with the present and I leapt up. The bird skull was for me to find. My chest tightened with anxiety at the thought of it being lost now. It was a talisman!
I had to go back. I had to lay claim to it.
I grabbed the dog and leash and rushed back to the line of fencing that I’d placed the bird skull upon. As I approached, I relaxed. I could see it perched atop the post, gleaming like a treasure in the morning sun. I picked it up and cupped it protectively and walked back to the house. The miracle of its appearance was now embedded in me.
And we walked the pagan streams And searched for white horses on surrounding hills We lived where dusk had meaning And repaired to quiet sleep, where noise abated In touch with the silence. On Honey Street, on Honey Street What happened to a sense of wonder On yonder hillside, getting dim? Why didn’t they leave us alone? Why couldn’t we just be ourselves? We could dream, and keep bees And live on Honey Street Van Morrison, Pagan Streams
Skulls: our culture doesn’t handle death well. We see bones and are reminded of our immortality. But everything is impermanent here. Everything is in the cycle of changing. Yet death has layers and layers of fear all around it.
Why do we let fear override our curiosity?
How have we let fear insert itself into our beliefs?
Be inquisitive. Look at things for what they truly are. This was my grandfather’s communication in mailing packages of nature and Nancy Drew. Investigate. Nature transmutes into something else, always.
Trees shut down in the autumn; their leaves fall to the ground. The butterflies migrate south. The bird dies. What am I transmuting? I asked the bird skull. What am I changing in this world now by living my life? What do I change by writing about it?
The layers; I am dissolving the layers of noise. The layers that piled on as we grew up, the layers that separate us from our innate childlike curiosity. The layers that do not recognize all the miracles around us; the layers that build like scaffolding away from nature and its cycles. The layers that pull us away from ourselves and from each other.
You are that pipeline of information that led to belief. I scribbled down this quote from Jacqueline (oraclegirl.org) recently. The bare-boned bird skull was a message to let what needs to fall away, do so. I paused to contemplate and was also prompted with this from high school geometry: the quickest way between two points is straight line. That pipeline; the equinox. What seems to be death is also rebirth. The bird skull took me directly back to my childhood, before belief. A place of my own natural way of being, in touch with the silence.
you may enjoy:
Essay Soundtrack : Hymns to the Silence, Van Morrison This is the title song. The whole album is wonderful.
Pagan Streams by Van Morrison The poem/lyrics in the middle of this peace. Beautiful 💙
The Star Base at the Len Foote Hike Inn Len Foote was my grandfather and this is a special installation that aligns with the sun on the equinox. Another “coincidence.”
Absolutely beautiful & timely as always!