Birds Coast When They Can
Honing our technology for taking it easy
This is Clouds Form Over Land, weekly writing about resilience, imperfectionism, and our relationship to the earth.
What’s easy is sustainable. Birds coast when they can. - adrienne maree brown
I read this quote four years ago and it’s been rolling around my noggin ever since.
The bird wisdom comes from her book Emergent Strategy - Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. adrienne is inspired by Octavia Butler and I’m inspired by both of them. In Octavia’s Parable of the Sower, the protagonist creates a worldview/religion/community called Earthseed and says “all you touch you change / all you change changes you / the only lasting truth is change / God is change”. I read this book on a long train ride from Chicago to Oakland, CA in October 2020. The pandemic, election, and wildfires awaited us at the end of the line, but for those 52 hours coasting along in the sleeper car, we had novels, work assignments on laptops, a Greek mythology video game, room service from a neat guy named Manny, and an exceptional bag of snacks.
Although Butler wrote her novel in the ‘90s, she penned a similar election, environment, and consequences. The protagonist says it’s easy to tell the future — you consider what will happen next and next and next. The world in Parables hit me like a punch in the gut, but I was hooked in as a younger me got lost in Wizard of Oz or Little Women. The protagonist was similarly aged, but the themes were decidedly more mature as she navigated a society more tenuously held than ours.
These were dark times and I needed a book that could meet me there. I needed to see myself as an active participant in a swirling world. Course correcting, waiting for more info, or calling an audible as we say in my football-loving family.
Every good thing that comes my way will be a change from how things are now. How can I cultivate a relationship with unexpected changes that is sustainable, or in other words, easeful?
A month or so after we got off the train I started swimming in the freezing waters of San Francisco Bay more regularly. Leaving the marina to sail around Turtle Island was on our horizon and I wondered if I could get comfier with change beforehand. Build some muscles around enduring the uncomfortable. Some mental toughness was fortified by running off the beach into a salty 54 degrees, but once bobbing around warmer waters twenty degrees of latitude south it did seem a bit masochistic. In hindsight, I might have spent that time going for a walk with a friend instead of shocking my system. At the time I wasn’t as open to ease.
This bird coasting quote has a few things to teach.
What do we want to sustain? Well-being, relationships, creative practices, livelihoods, life on earth. When I consider this, the work to accomplish these aims becomes more visible somehow. I also develop compassion for those things that seem to sustain despite dislike — single-use plastics, two-party politics, the absence of triple bottom line thinking in many boardrooms.
My partner reminds me that our bodies slouch into positions that require the least amount of work from our muscles. Memories of my Nana’s back remind me of how a spine can curve throughout a lifetime. My strong swimmer’s shoulders roll forward and I think, again, sit up straight! But it’s a little bit harder.
My friend Gillian recently wrote a book that you may love reading. She talked about developing any practice like exercising with one-pound weights. She suggests that at the start making time and showing up can be the hard part, not the sweaty reps themselves.
The coasting bird has specific technology to conserve energy while still soaring. Their wing shape and knowledge of air currents allow them to catch a wave. I imagine them attuned to the present moment, flowing and flapping. Most birds are not hummingbirds, and perhaps even they would coast if they could.
This four-minute video shares how the bar-tailed godwit makes the long migration from Alaska to New Zeeland. They spend most of the time flapping and turn off non-essential organ functions to do so. They stock up on extra food before the journey and arrive exhausted.
Maria Bowler tells us that actually resting can feel terrible. That it isn’t all bubble baths, sometimes it’s just spending time trying really hard not to look at your phone. I’m reminded of how awkward it can feel to learn any new thing.
The godwits and us humans barreling through life with urgency doesn’t feel easy. It feels possible, like something you could do for one lifetime.
Last week we watched Sandman and I was taken by a character who is granted eternal life. We assume this character will resent his wish, but at a meeting every 100 years over many centuries he is in love with life. His fashions and interests change. He amasses wealth with his compounding knowledge of how things work. He falls into destitution at one point and still proclaims there is so much to live for. He has found a pace that can be sustained.
Last week I also read Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta. The book looks at global systems from an indigenous perspective, weaving together a seriously wide variety of thought. One chapter discussed our view of the past. He asserted that the evidence of the past as a more brutal time often comes from very old skeletal remains. Since most cultures have burial practices that result in the decomposition of the body, those that remain likely came from rogue peoples carrying the marks of fighting on their bones. Yunkaporta wonders - how could we have been at work or in danger constantly if we evolved into these intelligent emotional beings with rich cultures and weak survival abilities outside of communities?
He shared that no aboriginal culture he is aware of has a word for “work”. Priorities in indigenous communities across time would have been to seek sustenance and safety, build relationships with each other and the land, and craft exceptional objects. He described how today we lift weights that don’t need lifting or peddle bikes to nowhere to avoid serious health issues and spend scarce free time maintaining our most important relationships. I felt a bit robbed when he put this so plainly.
There is little doubt that being alive today requires many to hustle in the name of survival. The vulture is up there surviving too, grabbing moments to soar when it can.
Can Do List:
Discover seasonal foods by state, add a few extra to your grocery cart.
Next time someone offers help, peel off at least one thing they can do (instead of saying, “all good, thanks!”).
Consider the 7 types of rest: physical, mental, emotional, social, spiritual, sensory, and creative.
Reflect on the things you would like to sustain and strategies for doing so. Can you make these 10% easier?
Did you try any of these? I’d love to hear about it.
So well written and thoughtful. I’ve read it twice and shared it with several friends. I’m going to put more thought into some of the action items at the end of your post. I’ll let you know what I come up with.
Reading “A Psalm for the Wild-Built” ( thank you Ash) and weaving that into the reflection. The sentence, “ Fear is miserable, as is pain. As is hunger. Every animal is hardwired to stop those feelings as soon as possible.” is haunting.