The Shoofly - February 2015

by Susie Veglia
This month - how the magnificent white pelicans and a good friend can make our hearts soar.
photos by B.R. Hawkins

photo by B. R. Hawkins

White Pelicans

Author's note:  Shortly before Katrina struck, I was walking late in the afternoon with my dog, Lhasa Boy, when we spotted some huge white pelicans.   I lamented that my friend, Betty Ruth Hawkins, wasn’t there with her camera to capture this rare treat.  After a time Lhasa became restless, so we continued our walk far down the beach and then turned around for home.  As we walked back I saw the unmistakable silhouette of Betty Ruth with a long lens on her camera.  Someone had alerted her, which is an example of what I love about our small community.  

Betty Ruth was wiped out in the storm and had to move to Jackson for too long a time.  When she finally returned home, she gave me a printout of a collage from the white pelican photos, which were saved.  I wrote the following  for her in return.

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White Pelicans, and an intake of breath. Disbelieving, Lhasa Boy gets it.  Quietly we steal our way out to the tip of the sandbar. The tide is out impossibly far, and the water so blue, transparent, still, holding the rhythm of their radiant whiteness in an endless sunset.  In another world, there is no reason to take flight.  They behold us through the endless distance without ever really looking.  An abyss between us, they continue their restful bobbing in primordial isolation. 

The moment ends, and we return to our walk.  I lament the absence of our muse, but see her from a distance some time later – lens, Betty Ruth, and pelicans fused in one captured moment, not long before the great storm.  Not long before we were all shattered for a long, long time, both communities scattered.  Not long before this peaceful moment became even more precious and rare, after a wrathful sea reached into both worlds.  

Lhasa Boy has long since passed, but Betty Ruth has returned, her gift the captured spirit of that day, unshattered.

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White Pelicans in flight

video by Ellis Anderson