What Its All About

So, I’m over-looking this canyon and I start to understand what it’s all about. What life is all about; what it means for the sun to rise every morning and to set every evening. Why the tide rolls in and washes back out, why salmon swim upstream to lay eggs and die. There were some vultures sitting on cliff edges, they had risen with the sun. They stepped out on ledges and spread their wings like a man opens his arms to God, as if to say to the warmth, ‘here I am take me up in your powerful arms’. You know a vulture can’t fly until the temperature reaches a certain degree. So, they sit and wait with wings stretched out teaching us who are watching how to embrace the day. Don’t rush or you could take a serious fall, but don’t take too long or you may miss the meals. Just go with the flow, in this case the thermal drafts, which are created by an actual flow. When the time is right, the vultures look at each other and then at me as if to say ‘this is what you’ve been waiting for, jump now’. They instinctively leap off the ledge and trust that the day will carry them into the sky. They slowly descend and make a few clumsy flaps, then it begins, and it is magical. The sky herself seems to grab the vultures and gently nudges them higher and higher in concentric circles, spiraling over a mile up, where they have the best point of view. They see it all, the life, the death, the water, the wood, the desert, the marsh, all of it. It takes time and faith, it takes leaping, it takes patience, but it is worth it. The vultures are voracious, screeching, screaming as they slowly move up and down the invisible corkscrew elevators devouring every scrap of meat they can catch or find. The sun begins to tire and the temperature begins to drop. The vultures are forced to ground themselves for the evening, and as soon as they do I see movement below. The small mammals that cowered all day now become brave foragers. They gaze up the canyon walls daring the vultures to come get them. The vultures nestle themselves in their nests and gently chuckle and rustle their feathers one last time as the hoots of owls begin to echo in the night.