Catch and Release

That’s a good feeling, I thought.

“A good feeling,” I whispered, but no one on the crowded ridgeline heard it.

The bird – a petrel, I thought, but had not the courage to ask – fought heartily against the variable drafts patterned by the blocky rock face on Deception Island in the Antarctic Peninsula. I watched this struggle from Nepture’s Keyhole, a curve cut from a spine of rock leftover from the explosion of an ancient volcanic eruption. The winds from the stormy sea buffeted my front and the calm waters of the protected caldera’s bay whispered at my back.

Another bird joined the first, the dark stripe of its wings fluorescent against the white-grey socked-in sky. The rest of their feathers mimicked the same color as the Antarctic clouds. Drained colors permeated this environment and those are the places I like best: the restful nothing where the subtlest shade of white can be appreciated.

Both birds swirled fought and clawed and flapped against the wind. But when they came around the apex of the rock spire, they angled their striped wings, banked, and stilled. Caught the draft.

Now, movement was the wind’s job. The birds twitched not a feather, staying taut from tip to tip as their bodies became sails.

They soared, in the realest sense of the word.

I smiled, in the realest way I could. Because I know that feeling. Everyone does.

It’s that let-the-wind-take-you. The don’t-control-the-drop.

When the wave hits just right a half second after you expected it. You’re ready but half a breath more relaxed because you think it’s passed.

It’s the footsteps in the dirt perfectly timed in rhythm with the breath.

It’s the let-go.

I’d like to think that petrel was smiling too, in whatever way a bird can. The scientist in me scoffed at finding a twinkle in a polar bird’s eye. But the artist in me watched those two come around for another go, over and over. They would hit that spot and release their wings at the precise moment the wind shifted.

I wanted to say it louder – this is a good feeling – but it only came out as a whisper. I wanted to tell someone; I couldn’t be the only witness. But I didn’t. Maybe it was for no one other than myself and the lump in my throat. But perhaps the universe was laying a hand on my shoulder and saying the need to share had another purpose.

So here it is now, laid out in alphanumeric script, for you to feel just a touch of that let-go. To smile, for real, and watch for the next round.


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Pequeña Estrella