“I think about the internal compasses that birds have to help them get where they need to be, and I think there’s a compass inside that’s been guiding me in the same way.” – J. Drew Lanham
Photo credit: Jean Beaufort
Hello Lovelies—
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This week the Boulder County Ospreys returned from their winter grounds.
I have always admired the mystery of birds, appearing during the same few days each spring before taking their leave again in late summer, their internal compass guiding them to summer or winter grounds.
Instinct compels them to go, and they do.
Osprey platforms are scattered near ponds and lakes from the mountains where I live down to the plains east of Boulder. One has a camera that I have been watching for almost ten years, following the same female, remarkable for the large broods she produces, season after season. I’ve watched through the loss of a mate—the one we all called Super Dad, who migrated one late September into the eye of an early snow and never returned—and during years when there have been as many as four chicks who matured and fledged. In recent years, with a new male on the nest, three seasons in a row passed without viable eggs, before a last year produced three healthy fledglings.
When I was writing Rough Beauty, I often had the osprey cam open on my browser as I worked, the high-pitched whistle of fish calling or the sharp piercing cry used with predators the soundtrack those first early chapters.
That season, I watched, as first one, then two, then three chicks thinned and wobbled then slowed and became listless. At first I sobbed, coming out of my office to tell Greg what had happened as the first fuzzy-headed chick weakened and died. For a few days, the nest was grim as the female gently prodded the bodies of her offspring.
I stopped watching, fearing the worst, only to circle back a week later to see the miracle of the forth, the youngest by quite a few days, had survived.
Of course, she became the darling of the nest. There was such tenderness and, I believe, real relief on behalf of the parents, that she persevered. The chick grew healthy and big and strong, and the bond she shared with her parents was plain---a kind of miracle in a year of immense loss.
Now another season is upon us. The mating pair has returned. I have already spent so much time checking on their nest restoration and early play mating, dreaming of the season to come
.
While I count the ospreys and the other birds returning to the woods near my house as hopeful signs, I also think about the “internal compass” that helps get the birds “where they need to be.” Like J. Drew Lanham, I live my life by the same compass that guides me.
This is no more true than in my creative life.
I have often likened writing to following crumbs into the dark wood. It has always been this way for me: the sound of one word suggests the next, a paragraph takes me on a side journey that becomes the story, the unpeeling of an image becomes a poem or, as is true for me right now, a novel.
This week’s writing prompt, coming out on Saturday for paid subscribers, will be all about following instinct. For as little as $6/mo you get bi-weekly writing prompts plus access to my full archive of writing and inspiration, which includes nearly two dozen Living Wild Creativity Prompts.
I also have a free upcoming workshop that talks a bit about this process of instinct and lets participants explore it for themselves. See below.
Thank you for reading.
Big love,
Karen
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Also here is a FREE upcoming event.
A Woman’s Place is in the Wild is a reader-supported weekly meditation on all things wild. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. If you would like to support my work and these weekly posts, the best way is by becoming a paid subscriber, which gives you access to the full archive of weekly Living Wild Meditations plus all of the Living Wild creativity and writing prompts. If you want to read more, check out Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living.