The Cabin, the Creek, and Two Birds

Spending a night alone at my cabin in the mountains—cradled by peaks holding snow—I have time to think.  I can assess what I have done in this life.

What have I done?

Consider.

With a thrown handful of stones, I knocked a baby robin out of a tree when I was ten.  I kissed the wrong girl three times.  The first time I heard Nights in White Satin by the Moody Blues, I quite literally stopped in my tracks and I listened to the song pouring from a store I was passing until the song ended.  I held cats until they squirmed in discomfort.  I made my grandmother laugh with my dumbest jokes.  I sanded boards against the grain.  I gave money to people when they needed it.  I hugged my dog and wept the night before my mother put him to sleep because he was too aggressive in protecting me.  I held Uyen’s hand while the final silence drew her voice and her perfect smile away from me.  I carried the ashes of my sister before we committed her to the wildflowers on an open hillside.  With my own hands, I constructed my house and this cabin where I now sit writing.  

Last evening, I walked along the murmuring waters of the creek.  Two pine siskins followed me—swinging from tree to tree as if on invisible pendulums.  In the west, the sun had crashed against something unseen and erupted in orange and pink.  Hordes of yellow arnica flowers nodded at me along the forest floor beyond the creek.  “I love you,” I said to the birds.

So, what have I done?

I have walked along the creek with two birds.  I walked them into their darkness and mine.  And now, early this morning, light is discovering me here in this misty mountain valley.  Today, as every day, I begin anew.

—Mitchell Hegman