Marin Arts & Culture MAC_Oct_Nov_2017_final | Page 35

the dozens, townsend’s warblers,
black-capped and chestnut-backed
chickadees, hermit thrushes, barn
owls, red-tailed hawks, red-shouldered
hawks, golden-eyes, golden-crowned
and white-crowned sparrows, California
towhees, occasionally a golden eagle,
and hundreds of yellow-rumped warblers
(a.k.a. butter-butts).
During this last Christmas Bird Count,
just as the sun was beginning to set, my
friend Rae and I were walking out to the
edge of a point on Tomales Bay covered
in coyote bush. It had been raining the
days before, so there were small brown
ponds all over the landscape. As we
paused to look at a scrub jay propped
up on top of a coyote bush, I heard
something tweeting in front of us. I saw
a small white-crowned sparrow taking
a bath in a puddle tucked underneath
another coyote bush. It dipped its chest
into the water, opening its wings slightly
and then shaking its body, splashing
water all over itself. Looking at its beak
and eyes pointing up into the thicket as
it flapped its wings, I became enveloped
by a longing to be this sparrow. I wanted
to clean myself in this puddle and then
go about flying in and out of bushes,
looking for grubs in the muddy ground.
We all watched the bird bathing in the
brown puddle, enjoying how the sunlight
hit the water and the bird, making small
glints of light flash as water-droplets
flew from the sparrow’s wings to the
air. It was just so damn cute. As we
walked away, my dream of being the
bird faded and I began to feel strange.
Disconcerted.
We were standing there, enjoying how
cute, or pretty, or beautiful, this image
of the bathing bird was. But the bird
was cleaning itself. It wasn’t necessarily
playing in the mud, or enjoying the way
it felt to be wet. It was just cleaning itself.
Objectively that’s all the sparrow was
doing. Later it would leave, find food and
if it survives the coming months, it will
make a nest and find a mate. But I took
the image of the sparrow and idealized
it, placing it into the construct of what
I idealize and what I see as beauty. And
that’s what unsettled me. It wasn’t that
the bird was taking a bath, it was that
I had made the bird solely into beauty,
and left out so much of the