To the skies

The murmurations were spotted a few weeks back, on my way to work. It brought me back to 5 years ago when my daughter was growing big in my belly and I thought I would call her birdy, my little bird taking flight, because of my love of birds and all things that can fly. I would see flocks of birds moving swift and graceful like flowing hair but with intention, and it took my breath away. I didn’t pay much attention to why, or how, I just liked that when I looked at these flocks of birds, and I felt hopeful.

Then a few weeks back, the fall bright with oranges and yellows, and sunshine, I saw miles of birds stretched across the sky. Over the apple orchard, over the valley, onto the distant hills. They flew together, apart, together again in a steady stream that went for miles. I slowed and thought about taking a photograph, but knew this could not be captured by my simple iPhone. I knew I had to keep it as a memory. But I have learned that to keep a memory alive you must tell someone else about it. So I talked about it, learned from a friend that this beautiful moment of nature was called a murmuration, and that it is starlings doing something we cannot understand. Scientists call it a phenomenon and believe it is more an act of physics than biology. A phase transition, like boiling water changes to gas, like how crystals form. A group of hundreds, even thousands of single starlings becomes one. The phase transition is hard to comprehend, but I taught my children about it, and told my students about it, and showed them this spectacular video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRNqhi2ka9k

I was home with my son for a sick day, he was outside swinging on his favorite tree, and my daughter who tagged along for a day off, on the driveway. They screamed at me “Mom, mom you’ve got to get out here.” I was cleaning months of dust from under the couch, accumulation of dog bones, old toys, wrappers, a sock. I got to the front porch and they pointed south at the remaining trail of a murmuration that had just graced my children with its presence. “It was like a tornado in the sky, like a storm cloud.” I could still hear the thrill, and fear and excitement in their voices. It was phenomenal and I was so happy they knew to watch it and be amazed by it, instead of look down, or ignore something that is massive and meaningful, right in front of them.

On this Veteran’s Day, 2016, everyone is reflecting, and thinking, and talking about how things are changing. Conversations about race, rights, what is good and what is bad. Many of my dear friends are struggling with mid-life choices, loss, and children growing too fast, and what the future holds. I’m working full-time and am tired, and haven’t written in far too long. I saw a quote that lit the fire I needed-The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave it neither power nor time-Mary Oliver.

We are all looking to the skies.

A murmuration is a phenomenon that is in the sky above us, and they happen often without people even noticing. But as with anything in nature, it can take you away, give you a new perspective. We are a collection of many individuals, living in one America, and we are flying apart, some together, some distanced. It is rare that the birds in a murmuration crash into one another, or go solo, but every now and then they will, and still they maintain grace.

And they give us a reason to look up and feel hopeful.

Check out the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website for more on starlings and murmurations http://www.birds.cornell.edu/Page.aspx?pid=1478

Check out Wonderopolis for amazing facts for kids and adults everyday: http://wonderopolis.org

Read Phenomenal for an insight into the phenomenal things happening in our world: http://www.leighannhenion.com/book.html