A hummingbird flits out of sight like a name
Peace and safari in a Connecticut backyard
What a gorgeous day where I am! I hope it is where you are too.
If you’d like to join us on this newsletter safari and haven’t already, I’d love to have you.
And if you know a friend who you think might enjoy this newsletter, why don’t you send it on over?
Thanks, and on to the fun. :)
I’m gonna interrupt my own writing about kayaking …
and an interruption to that interruption is that Tom Pluck has written an excellent post about our latest adventure to the Ghost Fleet of Mallows Bay. (What a name!) Come for the kayaking, stay for the feast is my motto. I’ll join him shortly I swear!
… back to my own interruption of myself, I am so excited about a new book my friends Lisa and Richard just gave, me, Safari. (You might remember Lisa and Richard from the post, Bushwhacking Into Peace.)
I’m sitting on their back deck in Connecticut right now, watching (I think?) a ruby-throated hummingbird at their feeder and an eastern phoebe not quite at their feeder but who likes to land on the pole that holds their feeder. It’s still a feeder to him — it offers a 360-degree view and a good launching pad, great for catching insects.
It’s all pastoral peace and green slopes out here. It’s birds chirping and catching the flicker of a leaf as dusk draws close and knowing something wild has passed by and then lowered the curtain of tranquility behind them.
There are bobcats in the winter. There were bobcat cubs who played in the snow.
Sometimes there are bears.
None of them approach the house.
I flip to the first page of the book, where Carol Kaufmann is talking about what seems to be her first safari, to the Masai Mara in Kenya. She asks the name of her guide, and he gives her his English name, his “Christian name” — the name he picked when he first went to English class, just as you or I might have picked a French or Spanish name if we took those languages in elementary school in the United States. He’s still using that with the tourists, all these years later. It’s become one of his identities. Carol’s guide’s name is James.
We had a guide named James once.
Carol asked him his tribal name, too, and I knew at that moment we would probably get along, she and I. I always asked too, and like Carol’s guide, most of my guides also preferred going by their tribal names.
Some guides didn’t. Some liked to keep their identities separate — their English names were for the tourists, their tribal names were for those who knew them more intimately. Either way, it was good to know their preference.
Our guide named James was also Kipetu. Who was also Kipetu Lerionka James.
Steve was Steve Liaram or Liaram.
Every guide, every person we interacted with was managing at least three identities, I slowly realized: the one for the tourists, the traditional tribal identity, and some mix, something forged and new.
I fell into a conversation once beside a pool with a young woman working at the last safari camp I ever stayed, the camp deep in the mountains in central Kenya. She was upset, she said, because she was fighting all the time with her elders about traditions. She didn’t want to turn away from the old traditions but she also wanted new traditions. She wanted a husband who would be faithful to her, for one thing. She wanted monogamy.1 She wanted love.
I told her that I was from Louisiana, from Cajun country. Those people have kept their traditions for hundreds of years, their music, their language. It hasn’t always been easy, and I’m sure if you talked with them they feel that they’re always fighting for it, but they’ve done it.
So we sat there talking about it for a little while, what it means to uphold a tradition and also change, what it means to want love, while the warthogs visited the watering hole.
A different time at night, when an elephant visited the watering hole.
Today, the hummingbird dives towards the bird feeder, allowing me to see him. In the morning shadows he is not much of a thing — tiny and black, not yet iridescent, a hummingbird sketch, an expression of energy. He flits onto a branch around the corner of the house, leaving my view.
I read just the first page of my Safari book and am reminded of that moment, and of asking someone’s name, all the worlds unfolding, in and out of my view.
Maybe sometime I’ll write a post or more about monogamy and polygamy, which we talked about a lot with many of the young guides who felt it as a pressing issue in their lives. I don’t want to tell any one else’s stories for them, but how often do you get to talk so directly about love and the shape love takes while you ride along and look at animals?
I’m about to leave this peaceful place. Wishing you all a joyful Juneteenth and a wanderful week. Please let us know in the comments if you’ve had any nature adventures over the weekend, or if you’re anticipating any to come. :)
Your observations about the multiple identities is very interesting.
Hummingbirds are magical, no? If Cardinals are emissaries from the spirit world, hummingbirds are burning embers of life...
You know where I was last week. This weekend I went on a bike ride to a forest that burned and was quenched by the rain that flooded my tent. Them I played with my niece and nephew on Sunday. The first and those children had the spirit of a hummingbird, so full of life. I'm a blue footed booby trying to keep up.