20 Apr SPRING SUNDAY: THE GROUSE AT MY HOUSE
Spring is the busiest time of year at my job, so when everyone else in Telluride flies off to the beach in Mexico or Hawaii, I get to stay here and wallow in self-pity. This year seemed especially bad, with the bipolar weather alternating between snow and mud. I avoided Facebook entirely because I didn’t want to see happy photos of other families on vacations. Look, my daughter is learning how to surf! See how tan my toes are in these flip-flops? Check out this amazing meal we are having tonight!
Most of the businesses around town are shuttered, and even the preschools, normally teeming with squealing kids, are subdued and quiet. At home, the snow fell silently and there was a kind of melancholy stillness. I was drinking coffee on the porch and was startled to hear a noise pierce the hushed calm—it was a warbling, clicking noise, a mournful and urgent sound. I looked down and saw a grouse in the yard. He had two bright white patches on his neck and as he cried plaintively, those white air sacs bubbled outward. He walked back and forth, back and forth.
He’s lonely, I thought.
“Hey, grouse,” I called down to him. (I think it was a him, or at least that’s what male grouse looked like in a Google search.) “Are you lonely?”
The grouse came back every day. He didn’t seem concerned that we have a 75-pound dog or two curious children. He staked his territory in the yard, a flat corridor between the oak brush and pine trees, walking in the same back-and-forth pattern. He was unruffled by the weather and the proximity of our house. The kids were thrilled to have a new friend, a wild bird that looked like a chicken and wanted to visit us every day.
In Native American lore, the grouse is a symbol of the “sacred spiral,” a sign of enlightenment and earth wisdom. The spiral is supposed to be dynamic, and represents dancing and drumming and being in tune with the rhythm of nature. I think I misread the sign. I thought he was commiserating with me, that he came to show solidarity during the bleakest week of the off-season. But I guess I was wrong. The grouse was telling me to dance away the blues, embrace the spring as a part of the natural cycle of the seasons. So I will take his lead and walk back and forth in the snow and the mud, enjoy the respite from the wildness of winter and the frenzy of summer, and celebrate spring.
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