Lessons Learned

Sometimes the lessons learned from nature are profound enough to take my breath away. I find I am often an unwilling participant in those lessons, which frequently happen at the most inopportune times. Maybe that’s the point? Those are the perfect moments to learn a lesson, when we think we have neither the time nor inclination to learn a life lesson, thank you very much.

A recent lesson was due to a flock of Common Grackles … a really large flock of grackles, that just happened to be crossing the farm lane that leads from our house to the road. I was driving my kids to school and me to work, already running late. The birds created a most unwelcome and unexpected delay.

Grackles, evidently, like to make short flights of a few yards while feeding on fields in a large flock. They peck the ground; they rise up in a small cloud, and move past the other small groups to the next clear spot. Then the next small group moves on a few more yards. I drove up to the grackles just as the earliest small groups started to cross our lane. For the first few moments, my daughters and I enjoyed watching the small groups rise up in waves and move to a clear spot to start feeding again. We were mesmerized until I looked out over the field and realized just how many thousands of birds still had to cross.

I was already late. I had an important meeting. I didn’t have time for this distraction right now. Maybe I could just drive through; they’d only just started crossing the lane…

It took only a few seconds of internal anguish to decide that we were stuck. I risked running over too many birds if I tried to drive through them. So I put my car in park, and watched, impatiently consulting my watch many times, half-hoping that clock-watching would make it all happen faster. You know the old adage that a watched pot never boils, right? Well, watched grackles don’t feed any faster, either.

The ballet of the waves of grackles, perfectly timed to avoid each other, was awesome in its majesty. My reaction was visceral, remembering the Hitchcock movie The Birds, wondering if that many birds could crack my windshield. But no birds hit my car windows, even though it was difficult at times to see past the waves of birds flying overhead. I remembered reading accounts of how North America looked before European settlers arrived; how thick the woods were, how the sky would darken with the flight of birds in migration. I started paying attention to the details of the grackles in their single-minded pursuit of food.

As if by magic, my stressed soul calmed, and the day became richer and more tranquil. I was able to slow down and enjoy the moment, relax and stop stressing about the endlessly long list of to-do’s that never seemed to get shorter, to cultivate the Zen moments we need in our lives. They are so rare and precious, the eternal moments of time when I can forget about everything except the immediate present.

If not for the enforced sitting because of the passage of birds, I would have missed these moments. A few minutes earlier, and I would have missed the entire grackle ballet and driven away stressed and untouched by the lesson of the grackles. A few minutes later, and I would have missed the ballet and been that much more pressed for time, more fully stressed and less able to cope with the myriad details of a frenetic fast-paced life. The timing was perfect, nature had spoken, and I had been ready to listen.

Living on the farm has been magical for our family. We never know what unexpected gift will fly up in front of us, slowing down our day, allowing us to surrender with grace to the slower rhythms of nature. Grackle ballets appear as if by enchantment, soothing our frazzled souls. Life is good on the farm.