Reb Mari

We have spent the last three and half weeks learning about the birds we are sharing this land with down here in the RGV (Rio Grande Valley). Bird watching is a big tourist industry for the area and attracts visitors from all over the world. On trails we pass tall German visitors carrying thousands of dollar cameras with lens as long as my short Mexican arm. We arrive at the look out points with our Brown, Black and short(by westernized standards) bodies, phone cameras in hand. When one of us spots a bird with our naked eye someone else will try to zoom in with a phone to view details. I like to curl my fingers, stack my hands and make a spyscope. We call out descriptions to help us remember. Later when we are back at the casa we have animated discussions about what type of birds we saw. We reference the paper pictured above and investigate on the internet. We learned that in other parts of the world what we call a buzzard here in North America is called a hawk. Did you know that Pelicans are 40 million years old? The brown and white Pelicans frequent the waters near our dock daily. Not all the birds we have seen are on the printed page above yet we joyfully add them ourselves. That’s what we are doing out here at La Otra Nepantla adding to the world what some are trying to leave out and over look. When I receive a gift of seeing an Osprey glide over these vast flat lands it brings me a sense of power and freedom. I imagine what it is like to have vision so acute you can spot a meal in the water from high above then use excellent depth perception and swoop down at the perfect space and time to capture a swimming fish in your claws. Equal to Osprey’s prowess is the Crested Caracara. I enjoy seeing the Caracara perched high on a telephone pole. Sitting tall with its eyes sweeping the lands for miles. If you go to the dock at sunrise you will see flocks of different species of birds migrating from their resting in the north west to their day time hang out spots in the south east. At sundown you can watch them migrate back. Thousands and thousands of bird fly over head while the light in the sky increases and decreases and in the background wind turbines circle. When the Earth could no longer wait for humans to cool her off she took things into her own hands and sent the force of the Polar Vortex south. The birds stopped singing and the fish stopped jumping. When we looked out and up all we saw were dark grey skies. Days passed with no chirps, calls, songs, tweets, howls, electricity or running water. We were all being assailed by freezing temperatures. Four days later I stood on the dock alone and as the sun set I heard a fish jump. The ripples creating rings of perfect little circles, the sound made me gasp inside. Moments later a pelican rounded the corner and flew by, I smiled and let out of sigh of hope. The earth is practicing self care and even with all the love she has for us she can no longer wait for humans to remember their connectedness to it all. We are just a few billion two leggeds breathing and sharing with the four leggeds, creepy crawlers, winged ones y mas. The shifts have started, the end of world as we know it began in 2012 like the Mayans prophesied. We can either write ourselves out of the story or we can use the climax of weather to shift the saga and change our trajectory.

“At some point, on our way to a new consciousness, we will have to leave the opposite bank, the split between the two mortal combatants somehow healed so that we are on both shores at once and, at once, see through serpent and eagle eyes. Or Perhaps we will decide to disengage from the dominant culture, write it off altogether as a lost cause, and cross the border into a wholly new and separate territory.  Or we might go another route.  The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.” -Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands La Frontera/ The New Mestiza (Copyright 1987)