To The Edge ~

My heart...yes... has been to the very edge. My soul has been there with it - each time recovering with hesitation. This hesitation of returning becomes much longer with each trip to the edge.

Some birds just overflow with their environment--they ARE their environment...body, mind, and soul. There is no hesitation there--they just are. And this "just are" is what pushes me to that edge...they make me "see" and they make me "feel". Have you ever really and truly "felt" beauty? It puts that big lump into your throat and when you swallow the tears well up into your eyes and you feel that great lump in the pit of your stomach as you realize that you are holding your breath. Its a feeling that I never want to recover from...it is the "feeling of life"...of "being"... It is what lets ME be ME...I want to be ME...

Have you ever seen & heard a flock of sandhill cranes fly over? The mere sound of their voices wells up into my chest. Its a beauty of freedom and of true wildness. It is of being--just being...It is of grace.

Have you ever heard the calls of a flock of tundra swans in the evening and could only see their silhouettes as they flew over, hear the whirring of their wings, and the bobbling of their long necks? By the hundreds? I have... The sound of their voices will haunt you with truth and certainty...the certainty that your soul will never recover... I don't want it too. I took flight with them that night and I WAS...just WAS... They grasped the dusk and made it their own that night. I was an intruder on the edge.

The peregrine falcon that sat on the driftwood stump day after day on the outer banks at the point--in sleet, rain, and wind-- and yet endured because it was a true & tried spirit. It showed me endurance and how to embrace life. This WAS a true peregrine falcon in the environment that it should be in. It was true...it was life...it was an environment of its own!

The brown pelican that I flew with...we are still flying...side by side. Companions. And the great shearwater that flew in out of nowhere over the open ocean still soars out there, shearing the water and carrying many a heart on its back.

And not of flight of the air, but of flight of the deep...the humpback whale off of the point...the one that "showed me fin"...Thank you...carry my heart, my soul, and my spirit into the depths with you...for a moment, I was ME.

These "souls" epitomize "true life" for me. The epitomize a whole environment within themselves and lets us have brief glimmers of their "just being". They take you to the edge...they make you feel...and hope that we NEVER recover!