Weight of the Wing

Winter strips the forest to its skeleton. There is no hiding in the branches when the leaves have fallen, yet life persists in the cold, small and frantic. We often mistake stillness for absence. We look at the gray sky and see only the void, forgetting that the air is thick with movement we are too heavy to notice. A heartbeat, a flutter, a sudden shift in the frost-laden air. To exist in such a climate requires a terrifying economy of energy. You do not waste. You do not linger. You simply are. There is a quiet dignity in the way a creature occupies its space, indifferent to the observer, entirely consumed by the necessity of the moment. We spend our lives trying to leave a mark, to be remembered, to be seen. But perhaps the most profound way to live is to be as fleeting as a breath against a windowpane, gone before the frost can settle.

Rob van der Waal has captured this brief, fragile presence in his image titled Long Tail Tit Showing Its Colors and Feathers. It reminds me that even in the deepest cold, something is always watching. Does the bird know it is being held in the light?