Leaving the Nest

Yesterday I sat quietly amongst the Mute Swans of Abbotsbury. I watched a pen arrange her angular nest neatly about herself, studying the movements of her chalk white neck as she reached for disobedient reeds and lifted them into their architectural place. She stretched out in defensive attack of passers by that drew too close. Too close to her nest, and when she rose up and flexed her arched wings in celebration of natures structural perfection, I caught sight of her prize... a single grey blue egg.

She looked at me a moment and appeared to study me back in silent contemplation. A moment later she left her nest to join the colony in their hundreds feeding on the generous servings of wheat in the lagoon. I felt responsible, as though she had asked me to keep vigil over that single precious egg. And I did watch over it with such mindfulness that I didn't notice the crowds disperse and the buckets of wheat being barrowed away, and the colony thinning once again into their inseparable pairs.

The vivid experience of life as I see it is still present and yesterday it reached out to me. Yesterday it entered my body through its sights and sounds and softened me from within, sculpting away the anxiety from my once petrified face.

With my own wings outstretched in anticipation of flight I visited a grocery store to collect some ingredients for a family dinner. The grocery store, a hornets nest of human existence where too many of us share the same space in mutual competition. It's been many months since I set foot in a place like this. I came out some time later, fragile, upset, beaten and without a single purchase. This is a helpful indicator of how, for the moment, day to day activity can trigger a stress response in me akin to what you would experience if your life were in danger. And the evolutionary glitch that is memory permitted the self analysis of my failure to reign through the afternoon until its energy dissipated into sleep.

I awoke later feeling restored, but such glitches are important in measuring out the size of my strides on the road to recovery. My mood feels more even, although fragile and susceptible to derailment by life's teacup tempests. The sedation is easing away and my waking hours are stretching out into the day.

Another day beckons.