Yesterday’s Elegy post included a reference to “rafts of white pelicans.” That reminded me of one of my favorite essays, The Song of the White Pelican by Jack Turner out of his book, The Abstract Wild (1996). It’s long, and really should be read in full if you can get your hands on a copy of his book. Here are a few of my favorite bits:
I am lounging on the summit of the Grand Teton surrounded by blocks of quartz and cobalt sky. It is mid-morning in July — warm, still, and so clear that the distant ranges seem etched into the horizon.
…. I rest and enjoy the clarity and count shades of blue as the sky pales into the mountains. Then I hear a faint noise above me, and my heart says, “Pelicans.”
The sounds are faint, so faint they are sometimes lost — a trace of clacking in the sky. It is even harder to see them. Tiny glints, like slivers of ice, are occasionally visible, then invisible, then visible again as the sheen of their feathers strikes just the right angle to the sun. With binoculars we see them clearly: seventeen white pelicans soaring in a tight circle. I have seen them here before, as well as from the summit of Symmetry Spire and from the long ridge of Rendezvous Peak. But it is rare — in part, I think, because the conditions for hearing and seeing them are so rare. Perhaps they are often above us, but with the wind and clouds and the ever-present anxiety of climbing, we fail to notice them.
…. Though huge [wingspan of nine and a half feet], a pelican, like all birds, consists mostly of feathers, flesh, and air. The beak, skull, feet, and bones of a twenty-five-pound pelican weigh but twenty-three ounces.
… The summit of the Grand Teton is 13,770 feet high, and the pelicans above us are at the limit of unaided human vision. Since in good light a flock of white pelicans is easily visible at a mile, these pelicans are at least a mile above us, or higher at 19,000 feet. This seems high for any bird, but geese have been photographed at 29,000 feet, ravens are a nuisance on the South Col of Everest at 26,000 feet, and I have watched flocks of Brahminy ducks from Siberia cross the ridge between Everest and Cho Oyu, which is 19,500 feet at its low point. So although 19,000 feet is impressive, and no one knows how high pelicans can or do fly, the more interesting question is this: What are they doing up there? Soaring. Clacking. Yes, but why?
For years I asked biologists and birders about pelican sounds, and they are unanimous: they have never heard a pelican make a sound.
Pelicans actually make lots of sounds, as Turner goes on to explain. They are extremely averse to any kind of human presence, so modern “observers” never notice.
… The pelican’s love of soaring is only hinted at in ornithological literature, but it is there. In his Handbook of North American Birds, volume one, Ralf Palmer uses the word “indulge” in the cryptic grammar of scientific description. He says the pelicans “often indulge in high-soaring flights” and that “while soaring in stormy weather [they] may indulge in aerial acrobatics with much swooping and diving.” This is not exactly the language of mechanistic science. Does this mean that pelicans are, sometimes at least, soaring for pleasure? Do they play in thunderheads for fun? Do they fly in thunderheads knowing full well the danger? Do they experience ecstasy while soaring so indulgently? What could it mean to attribute these emotions to a bird?
… consider the gulls in Guy Murchie’s Song of the Sky:
Many a time I have seen sea gulls at the big Travis Air Base near San Francisco flapping nonchalantly among the huge ten-engined B-36 bombers while their motors were being run up. The smoke whipping from the jets in four straight lines past the tail accompanied by that soul-shaking roar would have been enough to stampede a herd of elephants but the sea gulls often flew right into the tornado just for fun. When the full blast struck them they would simply disappear, only to turn up a few seconds later a quarter mile downwind, apparently having enjoyed the experience as much as a boy running through a hose — even coming around eager-eyed for more.
Simply disappear. Like paddling a kayak into Lava Falls.
… When I see white pelicans riding mountain thermals, I feel their exaltation, their love of the open sky and big clouds. Their fear of lightning is my fear, and I extend to them the sadness of descent. I believe the reasons they are soaring over the Grand Teton are not so different from the reasons we climb mountains, sail gliders into great storms, and stand in rivers with tiny pieces of feathers from a french duck’s butt attached to a barbless hook at the end of sixty feet of a sixty-dollar string thrown by a thousand-dollar wand. Indeed in love and ecstasy we are closest to the Other, for passion is at the root of all life and shared by all life.
The essay is The Song of the White Pelican by Jack Turner out of his book, The Abstract Wild (1996). I hope you will read it in full if you ever get the chance.
-Julie
Coloring 