Mystic River’s Fallen Seagull
By Brenda Colwell | A Collection of Wanderings
Listen to this Essay:
When I found a fallen sky-soldier, I imagined that a ceremony would be in order. A dead gull lay beneath the protective canopy of trees, leaves, and grasses at the river’s edge. She was out of sight, slowly being drawn back into the earth. It was a natural and peaceful scene.
I wondered when the death occurred. Did her avian survivors stop to remember her? Was there a moment of quiet as she passed? What happened exactly? How did this particular being earn such a place of prestige?
The cadence of angry war cries from seagulls in the near distance tells me otherwise. The sound has a rhythm of defense that is both territorial and relentless. There is no sign of loss among them, only the body remains, while her flock carries on with the business of being seagulls.
Other bird species respond in the sky. They join the Mystic River bird battle. Surely, I thought, they would attend to the reverent business of grief and burial. But I can see, by the condition of this fallen soldier, that they never will.
The trees surrounding this sacred resting place have muffled the battle noise. I have returned again, for the third time, to photograph her in this leaf and feather grave. Vines have grown to obscure her decay; leaves have fallen to cover her body. Nature’s work of camouflage and burial is well underway.
Here, in the midst of a peaceful feathered burial and the noisy sky clatter, I understood that nature’s calm and cruelty always exist in the same breath. As a lover of nature, I find it both beautiful and somber.
CHOOSE YOUR NEXT WANDER
