Song of the Chickadee

Black-Capped Chickadee photo by Aaron J. Hill on Pexels

I awoke this morning after a night of wild dreaming and went to the mountains for a hike. I reached the Sierra del Norte trail and felt how my heart and my mind were having an extensive exchange, loud enough that it demanded a conference call.

After walking at a clipped pace for roughly 20 minutes, masterfully moving over rocks and sand and exposed roots, I noticed that I wasn't noticing anything. I was so much in my head, attempting to solve the problems that have plagued me for my entire adult life, “Why am I feeling so invisible in the world? and What has happened to my life!?" I stopped in the middle of the trail and took a deep breath and realigned my eyes with the view in front of me. The beautiful Sandia Mountains in the distance poked through a gentle cloud cover and the robin's egg blue of sky encircled us all. I glanced to the juniper tree in front of me. Although there are hundreds of them all along the trail, the one in front of me stood majestically sturdy. It was then that a lilting black-capped chickadee perched on the farthest bough. Singing and swaying in the gentle breeze, it levitated and landed on another branch, and then another and another until it appeared to bless the entire tree, sometimes even hanging upside down.

I watched silently, in awe and wonder. With each placement of this tiny chickadee, I felt the weight of my mortal coil soften and sink back into presence. After about 5 or so minutes, the bird flew off into the distance. I sighed and returned to my thinking mind that wanted to create a story about the experience, wanting to "know" what the message was.

I believe it is quite simple. To be present with what is.

To recognize the resources right in front of you and to embrace levity when the impact of chaos and insanity threatens to deter you from your center.

I've been walking in circles around myself these last two years. Deeply listening, but also being stripped away, pecked at by the hungry vultures of despair, loss and grief. These vultures have left very little behind forcing me into my naked vulnerability. With this comes the very question that I keep asking myself: "who am I here to be?" Throughout this restructuring, I have had the gift of time and aloneness. Many, if not most days, just me and my own company. I don't have the same challenge as the majority of humans who are stressed and multi-tasking, trying to find a moment's pause to catch their breath; rather, I recognize what it took for me to escape that way of being so that I can have this simple, quiet life that I live today. And yet. And yet, there are certainly limitations to both sides of the coin.

During this period of self-isolation and recalibration, I have held in my hands what has remained: writing, art, beauty, nature, dogs and animals, children, song, music, calm, simplicity. The pillars of my life have been built around and with these themes and I have not deviated from them, even when I deviated from myself and tried on some other costumes. The truth was always peeking out.

 The black-capped chickadee from my hike sparked warmth in my heart and a core memory of my 5th grade year in elementary school. It was by far one of my favorites and one that brought incredible growth. My favorite teacher, Mrs. B., encouraged reading and writing and it was that year that I began my reading journal, wherein I would write down the book, author and date I finished reading. I still have that book and although I took a few years off in my younger years,  I am now close to 800 books, not including the children's books I have read and the ones that I forgot to write down. It was this same teacher who took us on our week-long wilderness camp where we created a sit spot to read and be in nature. And lastly, it was year that we made our bird books in science class. The first bird I drew in my book was the black-capped chickadee because it was always found at the bird feeder that you could see from our kitchen window. These core memories are also the deepest longings of my heart. I felt so much me that year. I was writing more than ever, I was reading constantly and I was encouraged to talk about my creativity and celebrated for my writing. I had developed a really close bond with my teacher's five year son who would send me pictures that he had drawn and that was the year I began my entrepreneurial babysitting  endeavor (thanks to the books The Babysitter's Club)

There was a powerful cocoon around me that year that allowed me to emerge secure in my creative self.

So much of that time of my life was imprinted on me. I valued the importance of the written word, nature and the sense of wonder that came from being still and immersed in an imaginary world. Much of the rest of my world was not so calm and emotions were heavily silenced in my home but I still felt the reverberations of them, thus retreating to my safe place inside my heart and mind with frequent forays into the wooded forest behind my home.

Here we are in 2025 where we are surrounded by the chaos of heightened societal and systemic disruptions. Polarization and divisiveness threatening to destroy humanity while our natural world suffers from ignorance and neglect. It's a both/and situation. This is happening AND that is happening. There is pain and there is joy. There are people using their creative gifts to find their personal joy, and, as often is the case, when they share it, it brings joy to others. When I am hurting, I turn to what softens me: dance, singing, observing what is around me in the natural world, laughing, losing my "mind" in the fantasy of what could be and expressing myself through the arts. Our souls long for these connections, it is what brings us into those liminal states, the in-between where belief and hope and longing are made manifest.

Sensitives understand that touching the void of the unknown through the arts is what ignites the electrical currents within us. Frisson is the explanation for when one experiences goosebumps when hearing a certain piece of music or seeing something beautiful. It is an actual psychophysiological response to this type of stimuli. Our brainwaves respond to the movement of that which is beyond explanation whether found in the syncopated rhythm of a piano, a voice, an image or person. Without fail, I feel this upon hearing epic film scores such as Braveheart, Gladiator or Star Wars. In more modern music, there are two particular songs that touch me so deeply with shivers whenever I hear them: Bluebird by Alexis Ffrench and Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's Shallow, especially when Lady Gaga's voice builds and the drums kick in before the full expression of the song. It is an emotional response to deep connection to the very frequency and water in our bodies. When I was actively involved in Shamanic Breathwork, it was always so powerful to create the playlists that accompanied those breathing through their journeys. Inevitably, when we played the film scores, it was usually the height of internal experience for participants. A journey of presence and breath, riding the waves of sound.

The moment when I realized I was not in tune with my surroundings today, I was called to attention to the music of the bird, the sensation of wind on my skin, my own breath and the call to return.

The sense of frisson that I felt with the black-capped chickadee today was a reminder to communicate, to share what I have to say without expectation, but maybe with the hope that it will bring joy to someone.

Even in the toughest of times, our animal and plant companions maintain their joie de vivre. They continue to move through life administering to their community, providing for a wider circle of Life. Thus is the task of the artist, whether you have a craft that you share, or one that is purely an artist of the spirit. The world is not going to slow down for us, nobody is coming to save us from the inevitable ebb and flow of living through change. It is our calling to administer to the soul of life, to build our emotional toolkits, our first aid boxes of the heart, and to take one step in front of the other. We are moving in smaller circles with wider ripples and the more we invite in our concentric circles of light, the more we will experience what it means to be a part of the natural rhythms of the seasons, both internal and external.

May this season of the autumnal equinox in the northern hemisphere invite you inward to harvest gratitude, clarity and depth perception as we move into these longer nights and cooler months. In the spirit of today’s harbinger, black-capped chickadee, may you find your wings so that you can bounce and fly all over the juniper tree, appreciating what you already have right in front of you.