Alejandro Diaz

02/06/2019

Eyes in Flight

Water laps onto the muddy banks alive with a murky green expanse of vegetation inches tall. The sun, shining docilely, is content to play behind a cloud-strewn sky that can be made out on the still surface. Up down, up down, silently atop the dark water, a sentinel cocks her head into herself bobbing alone along the bank of the shallow slough. Passive eyes, followed by an unruly outcropping of spiky plumage behind her crown, lie nestled in mottled brown wings. Extending in increasing length from the base of the hidden stout and graceful neck, feathers fade in and out shifting between wintry tones– stretches of brown, black and white. A hardened protrusion of light brown parted in two extends from the eyes marking the beak of the California Brown Pelican.

At a moment’s notice the eighty-inch wings extend out gracefully, exposing an eighty-inch wingspan. Stroking the water out to the sides and powerfully pushing air, the feathers come alive with the beat of the wings. The tail dips out of the water, splaying a smattering of droplets, disturbing the smooth surface of the slough. She rises a few feet only to stall and glide quickly a few feet above the water until suspended in time she lies in front of me eye to eye, encompassing my field of vision. In the next second she is gone, swallowed by the lap of the river on the banks and a new band of otters playing cheerfully around the bank.

Paddling furiously upon the dark surface, water churning around me, I begin to realize kayaking may be the sport for me. Looking ahead I spot a mound bobbing upon the water and I pull my paddle, finding a sudden reason to stop my maniacal drive forward. Gliding slowly forward, intruding upon the bird’s space, I am stricken by the solidarity she has with her environment. Her austerity and regal qualities remind of a queen or a famous person I can’t remember the name of and shut me into silence. I am confused by her obvious place in nature juxtaposed with a seeming solitude.

The pelican seems enveloped by this ecosystem; however, as I pull closer the solitude of the bird begins to protend against the background of its landscape until I am no longer within an endless marsh around me or contained under the streaked blue sky, but rather I am in conversation with a pair of intelligent eyes from across the water. She seems to pay me no attention as I inch forward until without a notice, thin streaks of water flay radially as her wings splay and begin to pump into the sky. She stops moving her wings and glides. Time slows and eyes staring into eyes for a brief moment, I feel I understand. I feel as though I have a moment with her and although fleeting it leaves me with emotions of tranquility and acceptance. I am left with the impression of a conversation with someone where one spends the rest of the day thinking about a word or phrase that was shared. Just as quickly as the pelican arrived face to face to me she is gone and I feel returned to the nature and environment around me and lucky to have had shared such a moment with her.