It was one of those mornings when a pileated woodpecker swoops before you on your way to
work.
Sandy was on her way to work. The heavy streamlined body darted black through the cold
morning air, wings tucked and crest raised red. Obediently, Sandy stopped – in a way you stop
at a red light that suddenly appears out of thin air on an ever-familiar road. The woodpecker’s
hefty bill pierced the air in a perfect down-arch, until two forceful wings shot out of the sides to
take the bird on an upward arch again, revealing the striking white underwing. Another swoop
down, and up, and there’s a fine tree to cling onto. Sandy stood still, dazed and interrupted.
There’s something compelling about big birds swooping into your passerine life. To chance a
turkey vulture feasting on a roadkill fawn, its face looking defiantly pink, naked, and wrinkly
up-close. To find yourself observed by a black-pearl-eyed barred owl, feeling humble, respectful,
and almost ashamed of answering the gaze that is not usually answered. To be stopped short
by the heavy reddish-brown streaks of a hunting hawk dashing before your eyes and merging
into the mesh of branches. Gets you every time.
Sandy regained awareness of her day - mostly, of the fact that she is running late, or rather,
standing here late. The woodpecker disappeared from sight, only its paced vigorous drumming
betraying its lingering presence. She shook her head and walked on, now a little faster. She
hates being late. Her students are waiting.
“Oh to be a woodpecker on a Tuesday morning” - she thought.
“To move instinctively, to fly, to trust the evolution to have equipped you with the best possible
body and a perfectly appropriate brain”. She paused, remembering how someone told her the
woodpeckers’ tongues wrap around their brains, and wiggled her own tongue to make sure it’s
still nothing remarkable. She almost remembered her ex’s tongue and started suspecting things
about him when another round of insistent pecks brought her thoughts back to the pileated.
To fly. To yap and laugh unapologetically loudly far through the woods so that everyone hears.
To climb confidently and always up. To bang your head hard, harder, fiercely, recklessly drilling
into the wood until it gives in, and be alright. Maybe the woodpecker would have better luck with
her students. They are at times hard to get through to, and the banging of her head on her
wooden office desk yielded just one result - a headache.
“Me and you”, she thought, “we have our routines. We abide by mornings, knock on wood, insist
on getting through and get through, headfirst, in our own ways.” She thought of the bird’s colors:
unquestionably and simply black, white, and red, clear-cut, contained, none bleeding into
another. She thought of their fixed pale-yellow stare and how she’d never seen a pileated
woodpecker looking lost, unsure, or confused, as if fierce determination was their biological
giving. She picked up her pace again thinking of trees, wings, heaps of ungraded homeworks,
and how radiantly she crosses her own path wherever she goes.