As Long As We Both Shall live

 Shhhh, don’t tell Svinda.  I have a love affair with the hermit thrush.

Each year, I wait with baited breath for the hermit thrush to return from its winter migration. Their  mystical magical pan-flute song at dawn accompanies me as I greet the morning, do chores and settle into my sit spot to contemplate the greater mysteries.  In the evening, mystical magical flute song brings me back to stillness again.  The haunting melody ushers me to the threshold of time and timelessness.  Their evening song melts this day into all the days that have been and yet still will be – a kind of dreamtime.  My being feels expanded and porous, small and large at the same time.  Is this what Oneness feels like – where everything matters and nothing matters except their song in the air and that I hear it?

A couple of summers ago, I confessed to friend/neighbour, fellow lover of the hermit thrush, that when they fly away again in the fall, I feel an existential loneliness.  She concurred. It’s called species loneliness.  Of course, the sound track of fall and winter has its own charms but this unassuming little brown bird with mottled chest speaks mystery over our northern spring and summer forest – a mystery that comes closer to me through their haunting instrument than through almost any other sound.

Each spring I worry that one day they will not return.  In our death dealing extractive and poisonous culture many species have not survived.  Others will not.  And if the hermit thrush is among them, not only will it be a profound loss but a diminishment – a diminishment of what it means to be an earth creature with all of our fellow earth creatures who are part of an essential wholeness and oneness.  Without the hermit thrush there would be fewer ‘calls to prayer’, less melodic beauty, and fewer reminders of the timelessness and sacredness of it all. I wonder if they know that I hear them.

And so I make this vow:

For as long as we both shall live, I will honour their presence in our forest by listening for their return every spring.    For as long as we both shall live, I will miss them when they fly south again in the fall. And for as long as we both shall live, I will pray for the insight, vision, courage, and strength to do what I can to protect their world, this world, the one upon which we both rely.

Marilyn – May 2025