The Broken Wing Dance of the Killdeer

To Joshua, just because.

Yesterday as I awoke my mind drifted on the vapors of lethargy back to a simpler time in my life spent harvesting asparagus with my little boy out under the wide canopy of southern Michigan's waning springtime sky. There is great contentment to be found in the harvesting of crops in general, but perhaps never so much as when the little buckets and baskets and fruit flats come back to the truck bed overflowing with the evidence of a hard season's work finally paying off.

Our Michigan days are ancient now, and they blur at the edges, but Mr. Rankin, who owned the asparagus farm still holds a strong place in my memory, and of all Michigan memories he's probably the best. I first met him at the little grocery store situated just on the outside of the township of Clinton where I worked as a cashier. It was through the frequency of weighing his tomatoes and bagging his butter and eggs and in our agreements over apple prices rising and falling inconveniently to our preferences, and through all the other customary chatter and commerce that takes place over a grocer's counter that he and I first established our mutually affectionate bond. He was old, rugged, weathered, and yet beautiful. The best of days were the ones he waited a little longer so that he could pay his bill in my line and tell me about life out of doors on his farm.

One day in our exchanges he asked me if I would like to work for him, which because of my established employment at the market, I first reluctantly declined. He smiled, knowing that I was poorly suited to a life spent predominantly indoors. Then he suggested that I could probably keep my job and still work on his farm anyway.  He needed someone to help him harvest his asparagus. I needed a chance to break out of the binding restrictions of market life.  It was a deal maker when he said that I could bring along my little boys if I wanted to. I finally decided to seize the opportunity, especially since Joshua, who shared my enjoyment for outdoor activities, hadn’t yet started school and I was pretty sure the experience of spending time on a farm would be very fun for him.

And so it happened that I began working on a Michigan farm, setting into motion the backdrop of a peaceful season in my life with my young son spending time together working outdoors, while my previous friendship with Mr. Rankin moved out from underneath the confinement of neon lights into the wide expansive arena of a many-colored Michigan sky.

One afternoon in the long parading days of harvest, having wound our way deeply down  one of the asparagus rows, Joshua and I suddenly happened upon a small flapping dusty bird. She was bent and broken, lying rather helplessly among the asparagus crowns. I was startled and surprised as Joshua and I had both been busy talking and working and concentrating fairly well on our task, me finding and snapping, he gathering and stowing, the tall green and purple spears into an old farm bucket.  We may not have even noticed the bird, so intent were we on our labors, but she had flung herself onto the path nearly directly in front of us, immediately causing me and Joshua a full spectrum of emotional responses, not the least of which was alarm at the sudden movement and relief that she was in fact a poor little injured bird, and not a snake.

Dragging a crippled wing, this artful little creature was clearly in an even worse predicament now, not only injured, but also at our mercy.  She turned quickly away from us then started pulling her tiny broken body to the far end of the asparagus row as fast as she could, which wasn’t very fast. She turned now and then to look at us, fear showing in her eyes.

Joshua and I watched her with concern, our faces contorting in mutual sad sympathy. We decided to follow her, wondering if we might be able to gain her trust somehow and perhaps transport her to a bird sanctuary where she could at least have a little hospice care and the promise of an easier daily breakfast while she convalesced her pitiful little twisted limb.

Just as we began forming some kind of desperate plan for hosting a spontaneous bird rescue, the poor little creature suddenly bolted up toward the sky, flapping and spinning and flying in a dizzy, half-crazed manner.  Her injuries were apparently not conducive to warrant a rescue after all.

Relieved and bewildered, Joshua and I decided to take our nearly full buckets back to the old flat bed truck at the back of the house.  When we saw Mr. Rankin we told him of the strangely semi-tragic scene. I noticed his face crinkle into a smile while we demonstrated our concern with our eyes still wide and our arms flailing in similar manner to the sad spectacle we had witnessed. The land still enchanted him, that was for sure, and I could see that he wanted to suspend the vision of us trying to rescue a wild bird for a little while, without speaking it away too soon.

He was an old Michigan farmer who had seen many a Technicolor sky roll across his land. He was familiar with the orange and blue and sapphire that swirled on the airy palette above, and with the billowing up, or the laying flat of the clouds. He knew how to predict which hues and shapes meant a hidden storm was lurking, and which ones meant a tornado could be on the way, or which held the gentle promise of sunshine. In Michigan, this kind of understanding is no small asset, especially in summer, for when a Michigan sky shines brilliantly the first hour, it might easily fracture into a rouge storm the second.

Even in late springtime as we harvested the crops, once or twice Mr. Rankin had to come out to the field to find us.  There we would be, working under a pale pink sky without any concern for a storm.  He would warn us that the weather would most likely be changing soon, then advise us most convincingly to call it a day, which with my California upbringing, I thought was hasty.  But sure enough, within a very short time the pale pink of the sky would drift away on the lightest breeze, like a soft chiffon scarf slipping away unnoticed from the delicate shoulders of a beautiful woman. Then a  new sky would come rolling in on a much sharper wind, like an old grey carpet being flung out across a floor. It would land fast and hard and everything about the sky would change completely! It was something rather spectacular to watch, if not the very representation of amazing! One time Joshua and I waited for a little while, watching the sky quickly change from pink to lavender to green to grey. It was like going to a movie where the whole sky was the screen!

Being a farmer, well seasoned and ancient as a river, Mr. Rankin knew also the temperament and mood of the ground he worked. He knew when it was heavy and needed the lifting pull of the tractor blade, and when it was light and windswept, and languished for a deep drink of sky water. All these things were familiar on a very deep level for him. It was only this new breeze of a young California mom blowing across his land that caught his thoughts up in a swirl, perhaps reminding him of whatever ancient day may have existed when all things on the farm were new and curious to him also. Having Joshua around the farm surely must have brought childhood wonder and excitment to his days. Having me there most likely added the element of amusing bewilderment.

Prior to our experiences on the farm Michigan seemed like a moderately pretty place to me - to the depth that the word 'pretty' can be used to describe a land of red barns, mysterious looking trees, and wooden bridges; but I was also much younger then, and mostly accustomed to the treasures of the coasts and forests of California, which I desperately missed. Not yet a student of field and sky, I was genuinely homesick for the comforting majesty of my home state, still so unaware of the ways that love and endurance and all sorts of divine whisperings can be beautifully demonstrated anywhere, even in a dusty asparagus field in southern Michigan.

But Mr. Rankin knew these things very well, and because of our friendship, it was through his eyes that I first began to believe there might truly be magic east of the sierras. When we talked his love for farming showed on his face and I knew that his communion with the sky and land was something a person should want to aspire to.  In the least it seemed much more meaningful to me than trying to gather up tips from the produce manager at work to know when a tomato might be ripe enough to sell for a Tuesday dinner salad.

A smile twinkled on his face for a long time after we told him about the fortunate outcome for the little bird, and the moment hung softly silent between us for a while until he explained the loving tradition of the supposed injury to us, winking at the magic and triumph and salvation of mother-love reasserting itself yet again, this time to the eyes and experience of new beholders.

It is a divinely appointed mercy that God gave the Killdeer bird a little theatrical talent, burying within her heart a particularly natural skill with the pathetic death and dying scene; for with such blessed trickery and cunning the tiny little creature, who lives most of her life on the ground, might enact a true natural miracle, saving her helpless young from the danger of a possible nest invasion.

Mr. Rankin explained that the Killdeer surely takes on a risky enterprise building her nest on the ground as she does, but should her strategy of camouflaging it fail, she makes mighty use of her wonderful gift for drama. By dragging her body away in a convincing pretense of being injured she attempts to lure danger away from her sacred little abode.  What’s more, she does this knowing that it will require her to become an open target and easy prey for any kind of hunter.  While her little defenseless stone colored eggs lay silent and still, she abandons the nest for their sake.  The very hope of their survival rests in the daring, bold theatrics of their mother, who must then follow up with the immediate finale of a clean getaway.  If successful, the little eggs or hatchlings will once again enjoy her warmth and sheltering protection, while she in turn, simply returns to the nest as a quiet little uncrowned hero.

As with the nature and character that Mr. Rankin had described, the little Killdeer mama who had observed me and Joshua pillaging the asparagus crowns that day long ago must have understood that her nest was in our direct path and we were bound to find it. She must have realized that in order to protect her eggs she was going to have to take on a threat that was easily more than 500 times her size.  In her favor she had her talent for acting and our gullible sympathies. She wouldn't have known that we had no interest in harming her, and had we ever succeeded in 'rescuing her' to a bird sanctuary she would have likely fretted herself to starvation. I think upon her now with great respect. She made a clean getaway and tidied up all the loose ends of our near intrusion beautifully.

Some days after the bird incident, on very quiet and deliberate tiptoed advance with hopes of spying reverently in on the little actress and her family, I wandered gently back down that same asparagus row. But despite my stealth she somehow still knew that I was on approach, and so once more she flung herself wildly onto the path, dragging and limping and squawking this time, trying now to drown out the noise of her hatchlings.  These things she did commendably, and I was duly impressed, but I didn't follow her down the path again.  I wanted to see the little family she loved. Without disturbing the area with my hands I simply crouched low and peered in on the fuzzy little offspring over whom she had brooded and for who she was willing to risk her life.  There in the indent between two asparagus crowns, three little hatchlings had popped out as twittering glassy-eyed babies who knew nothing about how much their mother had already loved them into life.  I called Joshua to come quietly over to my side. This was something a little boy should see.

Sometimes I think about the Killdeer and how resilient her little beating heart must be.  How wide is the depth of parental love and how endless and fretful is the grand sovereignty of motherhood!

Our Michigan days have blurred into only a few lasting memories now, but I do remember sending a card to Mr. Rankin the first Christmas after moving home to California, telling him that he made all the difference for me while I lived in Michigan. In great sincerity I told him that I was not likely ever going to forget him or the experience of working on his farm. This blog proves that I haven't. The kindest compliment we can ever pay a friend is to try to become more like him.

Mr. Rankin, for his part, sat down in his kitchen one winter’s day and wrote a simple letter back to me, saying that mine was the nicest card anyone had ever sent to him, and that he was real glad he always shopped at the market where we had met.

Wide and colorful as the hues of an ever changing Michigan sky, life rolls on and brings its changes. Joshua has grown up now, his school days have come and gone. It's been many years since I have worked at a market weighing tomatoes and bagging up butter and eggs. These days the sky above me is as wide as a tarmac and it shifts with the lights and sounds of planes coming and going. At night the sky grows quiet again, as blue turns to crimson, then to purple, then to black, over this California city.

Most of the local birds that I'm familiar with these days band together in flocks on the pavement just outside the terminal, and they scatter in black waves with the coming and going of people dragging their luggage down the walkway. They don't appear to be trying to fool anybody about anything.

The thing I notice most about them is that they always head back to the very same place after they've been scattered. I guess there is comfort in that, just as there was comfort out on Mr. Rankin's farm, watching the broken winged dance of the Killdeer with my little boy close to my side.