Watcher, reader, writer

Reading When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams on a park bench this afternoon, sun setting behind me, I heard a clicking sound that caused me to study the adjacent houses on Lowell Street. Is it someone building something or hitting their house with a stick? Then I noticed a small bird hopping along the branch of a large bare tree at the park entrance.

The bird spun slowly around the branch, tapping it with its needlelike beak. It visited the branch below, then the one above. Then it flew up to the higher branches, inspecting bark by tapping. It let out 3 or 4 single cheep!s, like a squeaky toy. I tried filming it with my phone, but then I lost it. I did notice it had a white belly, black back, and what looked like a couple of white stripes on the back, and its head seemed to be slightly pointed in a crest shape.

Now, after googling, I am guessing it's a hairy woodpecker, though it could also be a downy woodpecker-- they are easy to confuse because of their similar markings. With its slightly larger size, longer beak, and more solitary sounding cheep call, I am leaning towards a hairy ID.

Mostly, it was the voice of the bird that allowed me to name it. It rang true with Terry Tempest Williams' prose, which had just been hypnotizing me with its musicality and message. Contemplating the "myths" her mother preserved in life and in death-- in life with her strong silences; in death with her shelves of blank journals-- Williams writes:

We knew our greatest freedom was in taking flight at night, when we could steal the heavenly darkness for ourselves, navigating through the intelligence of stars and the constellations of our own making in the delight and terror of our uncertainty.

But she goes on to contrast the power of withholding one's words with the courage of sharing one's voice. What is voice? She asks. She turns to nature-- the wrackline at the beach-- for answers. There she finds voices in the shells: a whelk, a cowrie, a conch, "each a witness to a world we cannot see until we touch it, hold it, bring it to our ear and listen."

I often wonder how to maintain my voice, how to get used to the sound of it, and am often lost when wondering how to share it. I read aloud to my unborn son. I'll read my current grown-up book or children's stories I loved when I was little: The Secret Garden, A Wrinkle in Time. My voice sometimes is clear and animated. But often I'm out of breath, and need to constantly clear my throat. Today, outside on the park bench, in the cool air, my voice is strong. But I lower it or pause when someone walks nearby. My written voice has always been more familiar to me, which perhaps makes sense. When I think, I hear the voice in my head, not my mouth forming words. Speaking my thoughts has always been a process of translation.

When I go for a walk, I smell, listen to, touch my surroundings, scanning the branches of a large tree for a little black bird hopping between boughs, testing spots for insects. I am hearing others' voices loud and clear. The plurality of natural voices, combined with distant human tones, passing car vrooms, and overhead helicopter chops, collect and create a chorus of my experience with the world. How am I contributor to this choir? How do I fit in? I love my role as watcher and reader. And here, now, I am a writer.