As the pandemic kept me close to home last year I had to forgo my usual distractions and activities.  Not having my day broken up with meetings, errands, classes or socializing with friends opened up the day to sustained opportunities to read some of the dozens of unopened books that have piled up.  And I made a very disturbing discovery.  I couldn’t sit and read anything but the most page-turning mystery for more than 10 minutes without my mind wandering away from the page.  

My concentration had been hijacked by the internet’s endless click bait.  I realized how much of my time was taken up doom scrolling and “catching  up” on social media.  And that I was being prostituted by the big media companies, selling my personal information—my attention to their advertisers.  For these and many other reasons I decided to delete my social media accounts.

It has had the benefit of shielding me from a lot of the ugliness, anger, despair and just plain silliness that went on during the election.  But it also meant that I wasn’t able to get a daily dose of news from my friends and family.

Instead, it pushed me to be much more present in my own immediate world.  And to get to know, on a daily basis what my avian neighbors were up to.  I watched the snow geese on their migration through the spring.  I kept up with what was happening in the heron rookery.  I watched the drama of the osprey who returned only to find their nest occupied by Canadian Geese squatters who would not be evicted.  Eventually the goslings fledged and the osprey managed to bring a single chick to adulthood.  I frequently caught a glimpse of the sandhill cranes that nested in the field across the river parading  around with a string of chicks trailing behind them.  And I monitored two different red tail hawk nests, learning where the line was, when crossed, would send them into a protective screeching swoop.  

But my favorite was the common Robin who nested in the aspen tree just outside my window.  Every morning I could watch as she wove the nest into the branches twig by twig, then sat vigil for weeks, leaving only briefly to snatch a worm from my garden and return.  

Then one morning she was gone and the nest quivered with a faint mewling and four tiny gold beaks gaped just above the lip. The mother robin’s weeks of sitting still, patiently waiting had abruptly ended with the hatching and she was back and forth, dozens of times a day trying to keep up with the plaintive cries from her chicks who soon crowded the small nest, jostling and pushing until it seemed they would burst it with their size.

Then one by one they fledged, first hopping from the nest edge to a nearby branch, fluffed their wings and glided/flopped to the ground where they made stuttering attempts at take-offs.  The last one to leave the nest had to be coaxed by the mother who scolded from the branches relentlessly as the chick teetered on the edge, tentatively at last, taking that fateful leap into its new life.

I feel as if, through the long year past, I too have been sitting on my nest, waiting for some new way of life to hatch.  I can feel the stirrings beneath me, ideas are chipping away at their shells, ready to break out into the world.   When they do, will I have the stamina and determination to feed them and nurture them until they are ready to fly?  We will have to see.  This has been a strange and tragic year.  But it has also given us the space and time for reflection and the chance to respond thoughtfully, rather than just react to how we want to live our “one wild and precious life.”