This morning I saved a baby swallow who was caught in the tangle of flowers below my floor-to-ceiling window. I first noticed Mama or Papa swallow apparently trying to get to my Christmas tree through the window, hovering and crying. The other parent was circling near by. As soon as I lifted baby up out of the flowers, it flew away with its parents, though Mama circled back and dive-bombed me—either to say thank you or to chastise me for setting a trap for her baby.
The scene of the rescue.
The baby swallow rescue is particularly poignant for me because this is the first year since I’ve been in my new house that my welcome swallows have succeeded in raising a clutch. Each year they show up, build their nests in the open roof of the dog kennels, poop all over the kennel floors, charm me with their antics, hang out at the bird bath, and carry on conversations with each other that occasionally seem to include me. But the first two years, they left again in the autumn with no babies to teach how to navigate the migration route. I hope this year’s clutch will secure the next generation of summer visitors.
Wedge-tailed eagle atop his favourite stump on Eagle Ridge.
Almost every day, the farm gives me some sort of gift, even if I’m not in a receptive mood. And it’s been awfully hard to be receptive to joy these past months. If the first year of the pandemic was an adventure novel, 2021 has been more film noir. The farm gifts lift me out of the blue-black of sadness and worry, and help me to anchor in the moment, rather than fret about the future.
One of my many house wallabies, trying to decide what to eat first.
Last autumn, a pair of what I thought were flame robins chose to stay with me rather than migrate back north for winter. I’m now pretty sure they are scarlet robins, who are sedentary and pretty much visually indistinguishable from their cousins. They built their nest on top of my oversized wind chimes, of all places, and successfully clutched two babies, with me literally tip-toeing around trying not to disturb mama on the nest. Every time I see them hanging around the garden it makes me smile to know they chose to make their home here.
The scarlet robin nest on top of the wind chimes, seen from my bathroom window.
Some days my gifts are as simple as seeing a wedge-tailed eagle, or a swamp harrier, or my local wallabies playing chase across the hillside I watch from my living room. I try hard to note a gift when it’s given, and hold on to it until I can write it down in my farm journal. The process of capturing a gift, repeating the memory several times during the day and eventually writing it down is a powerful anodyne to the often scattered and dissatisfied feelings of life in the world as it is at the moment. I seldom photograph gifts—they are mostly too ephemeral to appreciate and photograph at the same time.
One of the teenage scarlet robins near the kennels at sunset.
Often, my gifts involve sheep. A moment when Freddie, Elf, Zac and maybe Clara are all just hanging out with me, when I turn around to see who is head-rubbing my leg—and it’s a sheep that doesn’t have a name! He just likes being with me. It’s a lovely, warm feeling that my sheep trust me enough to just let me be with them, and it holds me in the moment every time.
Freddie waiting for Mary Jane to bring the bottle, damn it!
Sometimes my gifts are human in origin—a particularly insightful email from my friend Mary Jane in Berkeley or a bitingly funny commentary from my step-sister Suzi. Both Mary Jane and Suzi have strong connections to my farm. Suzi and I share the family-cattle-ranch-in-Idaho connection, while Mary Jane bottle fed Freddie when she and her partner Joe spent several weeks with me in 2018. Their gifts of understanding are incredibly precious, and can lift me out of a blue or make a victory even more sweet.
The family ranch in southern Idaho.
Whatever your source of gifts may be, I hope they will help you to embrace joy and find the courage to take life each wonderful day at a time, no matter what it throws at us this coming year.
Migratory flame robins in autumn. They perch on the fence and hopscotch along it, playing tag.