Hummingbirds

There remained a particular point of contention through the years and the decades from the summer of 1966 to the turn of the century over whether my father had said that when we reached the fork in the trail we were to turn to the right or whether he had said to continue straight on. When I say that it was a "particular point", I mean to indicate that it was not just one point among many but that it was an eternally electrified, undiminished, hazardous point of contention, somewhat akin to the question of whether God exists or does not. 

"How does 'straight' sound like 'right' to you?" my father would demand upon the ominous reappearance of matter. "Who climbs to the top of a damn mountain before figuring out he's taken the wrong trail to a lake, for Christ's sake!" 

And off they would go. It could happen at any time. It could happen during a Sunday outing. It could happen over pancakes in the morning. It could happen on Christmas morning. Touched by a careless word, a sudden movement, the drop of a hat, the eyes of the sleeping dog would pop open, it would rear its head, curl back its lip corners, and we would find ourselves on that trail again, at the top of the mountain, assaulted by a frigid wind, hummingbirds, and a somewhat feasible cougar.

My father had risen early in the morning and set off for a particular lake, the location of which would become a particular part of the particular point of contention. My mother and I were to pack a lunch and follow along later, because, as he said, it would be warmer then, and perhaps also, as he did not say, because we would be less in his way during the time we were not present.

It was a pleasant day, in the beginning. Our little camp at the base of the mountain, which was really only a hill, albeit a rather high, expansive and redundant hill, was quiet and peaceful, bordering on a trickling little stream well populated by frogs and interesting rocks and interesting critters under the rocks. To be honest, I was happy enough just puttering around there and not in need of climbing any hill whatsoever. I don't know where my brother was. It seems strange now that he was not with us. Perhaps he had gone to a Boy Scout camp for older boys. Or perhaps he was staying with a friend back home. But boy did he miss out on a fun day, and ensuing years of debate involving the fun day. 

In any case, the arrangement had been made. We were to pack a lunch, fill our canteens with water, bring plenty of bug spray, and meet my father later at the lake. By then, the sun would be high, the fish will have stopped biting, and we could all have a good time together.

We started up the trail at an easy pace, dawdling along the way to pick salmon berries or to remove pebbles from my shoes, which seemed to have a curious habit, on every removal, of reconstituting themselves and reappearing within minutes. The day was warm, not hot. Harmless puffy clouds meandered in the blue like wandering paper boats.

After about a mile of gradual ascent, we reached the now fabled fork.

A thick tree, a bit scrubby and poor of bark below its waist—just as my father had described—stood just at this intersection, as if it had been a sentry long since placed at the junction to guard the gate between one world and another. My mother looked the tree up and down, took off her hat, wiped her brow with her wrist, and said, “We take the trail on the right.”

It was good enough for me. I certainly didn’t question the thing. I do remember noting that the trail that led straight on appeared a bit wider, more trodden, more groomed, one might say, while the one on the right sported an unruly beard of grasses at the edge along with a rather adamant chin of stone, but this seemed neither here nor there. The lake in question would be where the lake in question would be. In a land spotted with dozens of lakes, it seemed that every trail must lead to one lake or another.

And so we turned right.

Merrily along this trail we went, admiring the flowers along the way, and the birds, and the expanding view that occasionally unfolded itself in the spaces between the trees. A wind came up, impatient, moody, shoving us along, and the trees, as I noted, began to grow smaller, shorter, as if crouching to avoid knocking their heads against the flat palm of the sky. Soon, their heads did appear a bit scraped and scarred, and the trunks stumbled upward over knobs of earth that were composed more of rock than of soil.

I began to wonder what sort of lake we would find at the stony peak of a mountain. I wondered so aloud.   

“Well, he said turn to the right,” my mother declared, unshakably certain.

Right onward the breezes are blowing

The rise of the forest and wave;
And onward the great thoughts are going,
Upkindling the hearts of the brave


Or so the poet has it.

Right onward we went, not so leisurely now. We no longer looked at flowers or birds or discussed the beauty of the way. Right onward we went with our chins set now, struggling ever more steeply upward. Soil retreated step-by-step beneath an unbroken table of stone, a moon-like landscape of barren expanse, a grey reflection of the flatly stretching sky, pocked by the ragged blemishes made by the thirsty dwarf-like stumps of trees, gnarled, abbreviated arms shaking themselves pointlessly at the brutality of the wind.

That was when the first of the hummingbirds showed up.

I had never before seen hummingbirds, and I thought them at first to be some grossly mutated form of flying bug, for they buzzed like bugs, darted about like bugs, made swooping, unnerving dives at one’s head like bugs. I began to wave my hands at the things, as one would do with bees or horseflies, but the birds would just dart upward or sideways or backward in what seemed an unnatural, unworldly sort of way, and then return to hover, buzz, hum, and stare.

Hummingbirds, as I learned later in life, flap their wings at rates varying from 12 to 80 beats per second, thus producing the high frequency buzz that is audible to human ears. The birds fly at speeds of up to 84 miles per hour.

As I waved my arms, more of the birds showed up to join their fellows in what was quickly becoming a virtual storm of birds.

“There’s no lake here!” I screamed whilst whirling and swatting. “Let’s go!”

My mother took another look at the trail, at the unlikely horizon, blurred by birds, and that’s when she saw the cougar. Or what may have been a cougar. 

“What’s that?” she said, pointing.

At some distance, there was indeed something sleek, light brown color, moving about on the craggy stones. It was not large enough to be a bear. It was too large to be a weasel or a fox.

“There’s no lake here,” my mother said. She took my shoulders and turned me to the downward trail, glancing over her own shoulder. “Let’s go. Just go slow. Don’t run.”

Slowly we went, indeed—my mother stopping every ten feet or so, placing her hands on my shoulders, looking over her own. The hummingbirds buzzed. The wind whispered threats. The cougar was not there on the rocks anymore. It was everywhere.

“Listen!” my mother said. “Do you hear something?”

“Hummingbirds.”

“No. No. That thing. That animal.”

Suddenly, she appeared to remember something. Urgently, she shrugged off her backpack, worked at the top zipper.  “There’s fried chicken in here!” she said.

“I’m not hungry. Not right now.”

“No. No. Maybe the animal smells chicken. All animals like chicken.”

I did not know this for a fact at the time, any more than I knew any of the details about hummingbirds. It did, however, seem a reasonable thought.

She took out the fried chicken, wrapped in plastic, and placed it on a rock. She left the bread, too, and the cheese, and the carrot sticks.

“Okay, let’s go,” she said. “Quick, quick. But don’t run.”

As we descended, and as the woods began to grow up again, and the cool shade began to gather beneath the boughs, and the grasses and ferns re-sprouted from the rich, dark soil of more familiar earth—and the hummingbirds left us, and the cougar seemed to stalk us no more (perhaps it was lunching on the chicken and carrots even now)—the comforting old world returned to walk with us again, full of breath and ease, warm like tepid water.

All was well again.

Until we saw my father chugging up the trail toward us, wide shoulders just parting a growth of young pine, eyes fixed, intense, startled, angry, sweat glistening at his hairline. And then, something else—when his eyes focused on our presence—something pure, unguarded, unusual; illuminated, exposed, like a cloud passing before the moon. How do I describe this? It was relief. It was gratitude. It was love. And having lived for a moment in the open air, it covered itself, for it had discovered itself to be naked, and was afraid.

He had been up and down the trail for hours, back and forth to the lake, checking the campsite, setting out again. Surely, he had lost his wife and his son. Some disaster had struck, some evil had taken them—a fall, a wild animal, the wide and wild forest itself.

I put myself, now, in my father’s position. I replay the moment. I imagine myself running open-armed to my family. I imagine hugging them, weeping with joy, thanking God.

What my father did, when he found his voice, was different than what I imagine for myself. And perhaps the difference I imagine for myself is founded in what my father did.

“God dammit!” he said. “Where the hell have you been!”

And thus we return to the beginning. The particular point of contention. The difference between ‘straight’ and ‘right’. The difference between a trail to a lake and a trail to nowhere. The possibility of cougars. A recurrent buzzing throughout the years and to my parents’ demise. I alone remain, and I have no memory of whether my father said ‘straight’ or ‘right’. I’m sure he said the right thing, and I’m sure my mother thought she was doing the right thing. There is no debate about that. Not in my mind.

What I do remember, at last, is this:

Night having fallen. Silence. A low fire crackling. An unbroken conversation of crickets. My mother pouring hot water from a bucket on the fire into the dishpan and sending me to the stream for more water. Seeing my father as I approached the fern mantled bank, and my father just sitting on his haunches, staring at the water, a fish in his hand, the rest on a doubled page of newspaper, speckled sides glimmering in the thin light of his lantern. I stepped down to the water. The bottom of the bucket clanked  hollowly on a rock, startling my father for a moment, such that he reached out, at first by reflex, and then, seeing me—fully seeing me—with intention. His hand came to rest on my shoulder. This was to be one of our longest conversations, from that moment and to the end of his time, composed of words not said, things not expressed. Composed of a hand that lingered on my shoulder, the blue of his eyes, the adamant line of his lips, the lively play of the lamplight on the silvery flank of the fish in his other hand, the soothing music of hundreds of invisible crickets, the sound of my mother washing dishes by the fire.

“Richard,” he said. He squeezed my shoulder, smiled slightly, hesitant, unsure. He had something to say but could not say it. And that particular silence, that particular concession to what he would not profess, taught me something about love that day. It taught me that love is almost the same as fear. It is almost the same as sorrow. It is that which tends relentlessly toward the unbearable.

“Richard,” my father said again, letting his hand slide away. “Take your bucket upstream. I’m cleaning the fish right here.”