Midnight at noon

Would three hours of darkness at the height of a twelve-hour day matter very much?

What if the earth was plunged into darkness at noon?

Maybe some won't even notice? Yeah. There are some like that. Working too feverishly inside an air-conditioned box to even look outside a window (if it exists), and see the darkness. Or, looking outside a window, seeing the darkness, and not perceiving because their minds are still thinking about the problem at hand. Perhaps they are solving equations that affect our origins as a planet and as a race. Or just making money.

I wonder what it will do to the entire system, though - what would happen to the geological and planetary systems? Would the tides be confused? Would the moon be caught out of its orbit? Would the sun resent it? Would the stars go on as if nothing had happened?

On earth, what dials would be furiously zinging? All the infinitesimally minute measurements we human beings are constantly making these days about this universe of ours - what would happen to those readings?

What about nature? Would forget-me-nots close their leaves? Would birds retire for a three-hour night? Would the nightjars and owls stake their claim again? Would there be bats in the belfry?

What about financial systems? Would banks close for three hours? What would the "losses" amount to? Or would banks say, this is just another day, with one exception - we're going to have three hours of darkness, but we go on working? (Very likely!!!)

What about political developments? Would that deal still be inked? Do we go ahead with the revolution? So are we withdrawing support or aren't we, darkness or not? Shall we swear in the government or not? Is darkness inauspicious?

For most of us normal folk, I suppose we'd be spooked out of our wits. Maybe we'd go pray. Even so, there'd be questions that cannot wait. Do we hold off the marriage for a day? What about the arrangements? the guests? the money?

It's not too much to say that the plans of everyone on earth - individual plans, corporate plans, national plans, financial plans - will all be rudely jolted, if not derailed altogether.

Darkness. No sun, no moon, no stars perhaps. No rain. No thunder. No lightning. No twilight. No drama. Just......darkness.

The word that comes to mind is EERIE.

We would probably find ourselves in some weird, unexpected, unanticipated kind of freedom - suddenly, there would be nothing to do for three hours, in an otherwise pressure-packed day. Of course some of us, even MOST of us, would just go on hammering away at making our living, too oblivious to notice that the world had actually stopped. We'd never be able to figure out that maybe we ought to think about how weird darkness is when it comes at noon.

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Relax. It may not happen again. Once was enough.

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What if, in another story, also here on earth, those three precious hours were worth everything to life itself? Maybe, in those hours, the world actually changed. Maybe some plans were laid then that would result in ultimate destinies, no matter how few perceive it. What if cosmic wrongs were being righted? An eternal bully punished and power taken away for ever? What if there was a huge big drama going on out there while nothing shows on earth?

How can everything hang on a single day?

Everything. My life, your life. Our future. Our earth. Our homes, our children, their children, our friends, extended family, our nation, all nations, our entire race as human beings. Everything that we, as all of humankind, include in our definitions of "life".

What if everything were in the balance on one single day, a day within which darkness came at noon?

Too fantastic?

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Whatever darkness at noon means, it surely isn't in any script we would write as human beings. Maybe we will spend the next millennium figuring out what happened that day, and get nowhere. But it would be enough to keep us busy, like the eternal busybodies we are.

It is....someone else's plan. Someone else's plan, for something we might be curious about but don't understand. Maybe for something we don't care about anyway.

"And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour."

Skellig

A safe place.

That's what he'd come looking for.

He remembered, somewhat vaguely after all the years, the breathless run down to the coast, white with fear. The king's men , swords glinting in the evening light, bore down on him. He didn't wait.....he jumped. Thrust himself into the bosom of the Atlantic.

He was almost dead from exhaustion and exposure when that little fishing boat came by in the morning. He remembered nothing from the night past; they fed him, nursed him.... When he knew he'd been rescued, he wanted to jump again.....into the Atlantic.

He waited for the darkness. At sunset, he slipped noiselessly into the sea again. No one saw him.

When he came to, he lay on a rock, on a grassy bank. It was morning. A huge black-white mass reared up before his opening eyes, startling him for a moment. It was an island. Out there in the sea.

He got to his feet...have I been swept ashore again? No...there's the mainland out in the distance...shimmering in the wintry sun. Where am I then? He turned. And lost his breath at what he saw.

A sheer mountain. Green, but forbidding. No fit place for any man, for sure. Too sheer for climb, too narrow a bank to last the day - he'd be swept away like drifting debris when the tide came crashing in. Then he saw the stone steps.

An ancient stairway, deliberately snaking its way up the relentless steep. Someone was here. It was a chilling thought. A picture flashed, like an icon, unfathomably, across his mind - of silent men, working soundlessly over the years, lovingly laying stone after stone.....to the very skies. He looked up again and couldn't find the end of that stair......

It was either the stair, or the Atlantic. Why live again? Those who would look for me now....want to take my life. Even I don't look for me now. Jump.....jump......let the sea take me. Let the sea take me.

He turned, and walked up the stair.

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No strength. Why did I choose this stair? Why am I kept alive? I'd failed......tried in my own strength. It was the only strength I knew.

At midday, halfway up that black, sheer slope, every moment a dance between being blown away by the gales, and clinging, adhesive, to that unforgiving cliff, remaining alive by sheer miracle - divine providence, to speak the truth.

No strength again. I don't care whether I live or die. Heck, I never had cared!!!!! Irony. Blackness.

When he came awake again, he was drenched. A chilly drizzle fell silently. He lay on a grassy knoll, precariously horizontal for a few feet before a yawning black drop opened its evil jaws. One one side, flowers grew among black rocks. On the other, the Atlantic slowly drank in the drizzle. For some crazy, delirious reason, he felt alive again. The cold rain drenched him silently, but a delicious, fresh breeze soothed his smouldering body. The skies were black, yet not angry. Not like the previous day.

Started back up those steps again. Just couldn't imagine how the stair had come to be......did anyone actually live here? May be someone lived here, but not anymore. Either way, surely someone who cared about no other human being; he knew and understood what that felt like.

But my head swims; can't stay on my feet. The Atlantic yawns behind me and the relentless unending stair in front of me. Gale winds. Oh well, let any wind that blows have its way with me; what do I care anyway.

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"How did he get here? We must leave him; it is no business of ours."

"We must care for him. It's God that brings anyone here. Get some hot water, and a cloth......"

"If he could get here, some more will follow; why, isn't he a fugitive with a price? Why need we pay? The bloodthirstiness of men has nothing to do with us."

"We must save him; that is God's will."

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He cut the carrots out of the thin soil; put them with the shallots and the potatoes. The Atlantic yawned in front of him, as it had every single day since he came here. Miles away, Eire stretched; it was becoming a distant memory as the days passed. There, on the mainland, men warred; ate and drank, sold and bought, bustled and moved......it had all somehow ceased to matter. Here, on this hill, time had stopped. Day and night, rain and sun, sunrise, noon, red sunset, murky twilight, black night.....all came and passed, but there was no concept of time.

Here, a few strange men lived; lived to the sky and the ground, in stone huts. All they were aware of, if earth indeed moved them, were the sky above and the ground below. They ate what they grew; sometimes a gull or a gannet would stray into their hands. Months and even years passed and no human being alighted far down the steep, where the hill dipped into the ocean.

Perhaps it was merely survival; on earthly terms, it was nothing more. But this was no mere earthly hill rising from the waters; divine providence provided day after day. Perhaps it slipped into the sea a bit everyday; if you woke up each morning and felt the earth you lay on, you were aware of what divine sustenance alone could do day after day. These meagre men impressed him; they lived with a disdain of life that was remarkable. They had nothing and there was nothing to live for; yet, they lived it not by sight.....but as pilgrims, looking to a different world.

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Sometimes anger draws blood within. Anger I did not know I had inside. Raw hate, bloodthirstiness. Any blood will do; mine or theirs.

But look where I live.....anger does nothing for this place - does not preserve it. If this slipped into the sea, me and my anger would go with it. No, there must be something, even SOMEONE, bigger than my anger, any one's anger.

I'd seen crude drawings of the carpenter, that some of the men had....there were no artists here. There was no colour. There were pencils, and parchment. A stark, bare tree hung inside the little chapel. They never said anything about Him. I didn't ask.

But I wondered. Wondered what manner of man He must have been. Why do I feel peace, who had never known peace in my life? Why did I slowly think it was possible, even RIGHT, to live again? My anger wasn't right; sometimes, the sea clawed like an enormous enraged dragon at our little hill, but was I right to think He never let this hill go? And when I walked on the stair, with the foaming sea on one side and the black steep on the other, did an invisible hand loose the wind's fingers as they coiled and clawed around my frail body?

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He'd found his safe place now; a patch of grass with underlying black rock, in a corrie on the farther side of the hill. Here he lay alone for hours, watching the kaleidoscope of sea, earth and sky, as God's gentle breeze blew over the hurricane gales in his soul. Permanence came; and with it, miraculously, that jewel of life on earth - purpose. The hard knot of anger came undone slowly, uncoiling and melting away, replaced by a strange calm which had no root within him; he could not explain it and certainly didn't try.

He loved this place; here he communed with what had become his home in the sky, not yet realised. Here an invisible hand touched his, here where the same hand joined sea, earth and sky.

He thought, strangely, of what this place would be if someone came here after him. Would they feel the invisible hand? Maybe they would....if he could put up a stone there. He heaved a black stone into the soft earth and began hewing it a little each day.

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Michael had gotten separated from the group he'd come with, and found he'd wandered on to the far side of South Peak. It had been cloudy and murky all day, with sheets of rain; they'd been advised not to come here today. Michael never knew what drew him.

Then he saw the Cross. On this seemingly God-forsaken outpost, looking towards the distant Americas far, far beyond the horizon, a gentle breeze blew and a weak sun appeared. The rough-hewn cross stood as it always had, a little tilt, well planted into the still-soft meadow earth.

Someone had known an invisible hand - in the attic of time, and just thought to record it.

It stood a witness to another who'd been here in a bygone age..... the centuries had flown by but yet the cross stood, braving the onslaught of the elements. Michael knew it would stand for centuries to come; unless the invisible hand were to remove it......when it's work was done, for all time and all ages........

"Say a prayer for The Pretender..."

Brave new world.

Everything seems that way when it starts. Till the dream rots.

It's easy to live the highs. Easy to ride the crest of the wave, even though it may not be ours. But when it comes to calling the lows, naming the hollowness, facing the wormwood, writing about the canker, where did the brave new songwriters go?

Rock music always seemed sad to me. It was real, because you could have fun, but you'd have to face your ghosts and demons. The sadness was real, sometimes more real than the happiness. We had thought that after Haight-Ashbury, Woodstock and a host of culture heroes, the new music would break new ground and provide answers - in the seventies.

It didn't.

Most of rock was repertory, the pale-white cover version, after 1970. It was not new - the life-blood was gone. In fact, even the things that provided the knife-edge during those groundbreaking days were gone. Gone was the wonder, the heady elixir of discovery.

I want to know what became of the changes we waited for love to bring
Were they only the fitful dreams of some greater awakening?

Somewhere from within, in our self-worship and ritual mirrors, the canker began to eat away. Rock music had had a memorable and fondly-remember'd voice, but was now being sold to the highest bidder, ideals and all. The accountants owned rock music in the seventies; rock music was not itself, did not own itself. The flights of fancy were now landed, to perform at order, for somebody's gain.

Caught between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender
Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring
And the junk man pounds his fender
Where the veterans dream of the fight
Fast asleep at the traffic light
And the children solemnly wait for the ice cream vendor

It was the day of a unique type of person, who was to be the prototype for later decades - one who had seen love, freedom and creativity, but had sold his soul. Or, of a person who had seen dreams die and never recovered. Cut loose from his tender anchor, he was adrift without a beacon in a world that knew nothing of and cared even less about hopes or his dreams.

Out into the cool of the evening strolls the Pretender
He knows that all his hopes and dreams begin and end there

Are you there?
Say a prayer for the Pretender
Who started out so young and strong
Only to surrender

The Pretender WAS the seventies; either he had no higher dreams than his own, or had no dreams anyway because they had been crushed. Either way, he had cold blood flowing in his veins; his emotional nerve had been severed and the wound cauterised. His unseeing eyes were fish-grey and dead.

I don't think it was just rock music, it was everything that we call life. Everywhere, the Pretender set up shop - caretaker, and undertaker. He provided security, when there was nothing to guard; the seeming exhilaration of freedom when there was no creativity or song; wistfulness and nostalgia, though the anchor to their day had been cut away; fanfare, pomp and circumstance, for paper kings on paper thrones; the very substance of a mirthless smile. The Pretender knew nothing of causes, of the river of life or where it flowed, the raw nerve or where the sensation was; but he acted the part all the same.

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This has been really difficult to write. The song has been such a life-changing force over the years and I always despair of capturing its life-blood and putting it on display.

I heard of Jackson Browne in 1990. I had heard his name in connection with the Eagles earlier, and that he had written their earliest hit, "Take It Easy". 1990 and 1991 were the years of the singer-songwriter genre for me. Donald Clarke wrote, "the singer-songwriters were the true art-rockers, but they would never have accepted the label". I searched hungrily for songwriters who wrote their own songs and sang in the folk-blues-rock'n'roll idiom, and found a host of them; Jackson Browne was one shining star in a constellation.

Jackson Browne captures my attention as much now as he did twenty years ago, because he seems to take thoughts, feelings and deep impressions out of my heart and put words to them; like something I've always suspected to be true, he puts them into words. He certainly is the blue-eyed singer, with the full sunset behind him, on a beach, writing songs by picking them out of my heart.

Songwriters of that noble genre and tribe are many and they're all equally skilled. To be fair, however, none of them captured the seventies so completely, tellingly or hauntingly as Jackson Browne did in "The Pretender". It was and always will remain a song that captured the essence of an entire decade - the sadness, the hollowness, the "it's all over"ness, the facadeness, the "shards-of-a-dream"ness. No brave new world here, just ghosts.

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We still can recognise The Pretender in this age. The links with Jackson Browne's 1976 portrait have been SEEMINGLY severed, but what has happened is a mutation, something like what happened to Jack Napier when he fell into that vat of foul fluid and emerged as The Joker. In the seventies, the Pretender was merely immature; today, he is past recall.

Words like "sinister", "eerie" and "evil" come to mind, words that seemed aeons away in 1976. It's just the age, it's just the stage......

The cumulonimbus archives - excerpt 2

Thirlmere is one of the lakes in Lake District.

All the lakes are considered to be gems, like jewels set inside lush green mountains. Most people eulogise (actually rhapsodise) about Derwentwater, Buttermere and Ullswater. One poor man gave out of his want, to see that Derwentwater was not touched by tourist influences and for its upkeep; he was absolutely mesmerised by its unsurpassed beauty. Buttermere is one of the most beautiful of the lakes, and on the shore of Ullswater, there are daffodil banks that surely inspired Wordsworth's immortal poem, Daffodils.

(probably one of the daffodil banks that inspired the poem. Photo courtesy John Butler. The lake seen here is Ullswater)

The other lakes, though not thought of in the same breath.......are also favourites. It's like each man has his favourite. There's Rydal Water, with that lovely green slope leading into the water. Grasmere has this grand old oak right on its shores. Bassenthwaite looks the most peaceful. Ennerdale Water is dramatic, with mountains hemming it in. Crummock Water looks lovely in the rain. Coniston Water and Loweswater also have their moments of glory. Even Wast Water, the most chilling and sinister of the lakes, has its gentle side. Haweswater, though little more than a man-made reservoir, has a lovely little island right in the middle. Finally there's Windermere, the largest, which is not lacking in beauty, if only people would stop kayaking up and down in motorboats.

Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons, a picturesque and idyllic tale of children adventuring in the woods, generally accepted as happening along Windermere's shores, but sometimes resembling Coniston Water as well (Wikipedia). Matters very little which of the lakes it really is.

This post is about none of these lakes.

Derwentwater, the lake that inspired a poor man to part with his earnings for its preservation. Photo courtesy John Butler.

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Have you ever felt chilly inside of the heart?

When winter's frost descends. An opaque, sleety white enshrouds all. Apparently, before Herge composed Tintin in Tibet, he had dreams of white, where everything turned to white and he would wake up screaming. Not the PALE WHITE of death, but just icy, pure, white. Like a snowflake.

Under the snow, water freezes. I have this picture of Ullswater and the surface is frozen. The lovely ptarmigan is seen. Snowy buntings and snowy owls. Like the white of tropicbirds.

The heart freezes. It doesn't die; it just stops. The physical still beats, but the heart of the man has stopped. It doesn't matter anymore to keep moving. It's rather time to look around, and see what the white looks like. It's no longer you, but the white around. The crude word people use is hibernation.

It's no time for energy, action, DOING, moving, production, industriousness, enterprise, war or food. It's just stop-ness. Still. Silent. Watching the white come down and enshroud, silently, wordlessly. STOPPED. Not INTERRUPTED, not PAUSED, nor STOPPED DEAD. Just S.T.O.P.P.E.D.

You realise that moving would be wrong. To do would be to disturb the stillness. To expend energy would be such a tragedy. You don't really want to go anywhere or see anyone. You don't WANT. You're not upset or angry, or disturbed or hurt, or ANYTHING. You've just stopped. Slowly, you put things away. All instruments of energy are slowly folded away. The cabin's boarded up. The phone is off the hook. "Gone south for the winter".

Underneath the chilly white sheet, there is life. No one can see the gentle soothing river that flows, but it trickles into your being. Like the Brook of Cherith....in a dry land. It makes no sound, but flows gently over stone-hard rock, softening it and warming it under the chilly white sheet. Healing comes. Depleted mineral stocks replenish. Life slowly eases back into veins. Summer slowly percolates into the deep recesses of winter, underneath the chilly white sheet, waiting its turn..... but for now, no movement.

On the surface, gale force winds blow. Cumulonimbus clouds gather. Icy white and harsh, silhouetted black criss-cross. But nothing moves. You can't tell that anyone lives there.

The dark, dark, dark chilly night of the soul. You do not know whether there is a way out, but you trust in God. Your fears batter you and beat you to the ground, but you have found your refuge. You are not out of the woods yet, but you know God leads you.

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I don't know that my words strike a chord, but underneath the chilly sheet of white, life slowly forms.

I saw this photograph in 2003. Actually I discovered John Butler's site on a frantic search for pictures of the Lake District. Earlier, in the nineties, I saw a picture of an island on Thirlmere, and a leaf in the chilly water. Then came John Butler's picture, taken through the trees on this rise called Raven Crag. Thirlmere looked silent, frozen, still. Not dead, just still. The trees on Raven Crag had bare, frosted branches, creating a bizarre, poky haze. But through the boughs, I saw silent, still Thirlmere.

Thirlmere isn't my favourite lake; Derwentwater is. Or probably Bassenthwaite. Or even Crummock Water. But Thirlmere is more me than Derwentwater is today. Silent, still, unwilling and unable to move a muscle. Inside me, life slowly takes root. Where it may lead when summer comes, I don't know and I don't care. There might be harvest, or there might be colour. Green, maybe, after the frost has cleared.

But for now, Thirlmere lies silent and still.

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Steve Miller and Ben Sidran wrote this absolutely lame, three-chord thing for their album Book of Dreams in 1977. I heard it in 1988, in (!!!!) winter. I didn't know about Thirlmere then. But my heart was already on Raven Crag, looking at that frosted-over surface in the chill of winter.

I wouldn't say it's a beautiful song. But it does say something real and absolutely right. There are times you need to stand back from your life and let those that rush on go right on ahead. We need silence. Stillness. Solitude. They're not indecisiveness; they're just agents of rejuvenation. Things take time. The world is not such a peaceful place where you will get time to reflect and learn, for your future. But you got to create your Thirlmere. You got to get to Raven Crag all by yourself, and take no one along, and then look through the trees. Then you got to let the silence sink in.

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I would like to thank John Butler, and his site on the Lake District, and for that IMMORTAL photo of Thirlmere. I don't know if any other photo I've seen of the Lake District has impacted me as much.

I also thank Steve Miller and Ben Sidran, for their two-penny effort which has gone so far.

Gilboa

"O mountains of Gilboa,
may you have neither dew nor rain,
nor fields that yield offerings of grain.
For there the shield of the mighty was defiled,
the shield of Saul—no longer rubbed with oil."

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A sleet wind blows, and with it, bitter rain falls. Soaks deep into the warrior's skin. He came back to see if he could find his king, so he could carry him back.

On the top of the mountain, a few bodies lie strewn about. The rout had been complete. Defeat hangs thick in the air. But the king he could not find. The godless.....had taken him away.

Jonathan lay there, body mottled with blood. A mighty man of valour, laid low in the dust.

The wind howls.

The warrior surveys the battlefield as his thoughts race back forty years. The Valley of Elah. A headless Philistine, fallen hard into the ground. And a day of great victory. Today, however, forty years later, is a day of defeat and rout, on this bare mountain.

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In Beth Shan, the headless body of a mighty king is impaled on the city wall. A grisly sight. Everything happens again. A few hundred years earlier, an Israelite warrior, captured, stood in chains inside the pagan temple, between two foundation pillars. And the godless rejoiced. Sang songs.

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The warrior rides hard......into Jabesh Gilead. As he dismounts in the town square, the townspeople gather round. He shakes his head.

"The king...died a valiant death on Mount Gilboa. I found Jonathan there too, dead."

"Did you find the king's body?"

"The Philistines......have desecrated it. His headless body hangs on the wall in Beth Shan."

A shocked silence.

And amid the grey of rout and defeat, a purpose comes. Let's do for the king what he did for us. He saved us; let's save him now. In defeat, gratitude and duty still burn in Israelite hearts.

There are no words; everyone agrees. The bravest in Jabesh Gilead......leave the town square one by one. Mount their horses. Ride all night to Beth Shan. In the hour of crippling defeat, a personal debt remains to be paid. A king of Israel must be respected......even in death.

In Beth Shan, festivities suffer a rude jolt as a fierce battle ensues. The body of the king is captured.

As all Israel is scattered yet again, a solemn laying to rest is seen, under a tamarisk tree in Jabesh.

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Meanwhile an Amalekite rides a black horse to Ziklag. A brave ride, considering the decimation of the Amalekites just a few days before. But this Amalekite knows nothing of David; he only knows of Saul on Gilboa. An opportunist; perhaps David will withhold judgment because of the "news" he brings.

And the news he bears hangs on his own head, but he doesn't know that yet.

Decapitating a king is just a convenience for an opportunist. Only, he lies; he hopes his lie will safeguard his life. Who can unmask his lie? Why, here's the very crown that was on Saul's head!!! The crown of a king of Israel.

Then David said to the young man who brought him the report, "How do you know that Saul and his son Jonathan are dead?"
"I happened to be on Mount Gilboa," the young man said, "and there was Saul, leaning on his spear, with the chariots and riders almost upon him. When he turned around and saw me, he called out to me, and I said, 'What can I do?'
"He asked me, 'Who are you?'
" 'An Amalekite,' I answered.
"Then he said to me, 'Stand over me and kill me! I am in the throes of death, but I'm still alive.'
"So I stood over him and killed him, because I knew that after he had fallen he could not survive. And I took the crown that was on his head and the band on his arm and have brought them here to my lord."

What a story!!!!! Snuffing out a divinely anointed king......comes easily to the godless. Only.....he lied. He'd probably never even been on Gilboa......he had, perhaps, stolen the crown from some mercenary. Or had stolen it himself before the Philistines decapitated Saul.

Now the Philistines fought against Israel; the Israelites fled before them, and many fell slain on Mount Gilboa. The Philistines pressed hard after Saul and his sons, and they killed his sons Jonathan, Abinadab and Malki-Shua. The fighting grew fierce around Saul, and when the archers overtook him, they wounded him critically.
Saul said to his armor-bearer, "Draw your sword and run me through, or these uncircumcised fellows will come and run me through and abuse me."
But his armor-bearer was terrified and would not do it; so Saul took his own sword and fell on it. When the armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he too fell on his sword and died with him. So Saul and his three sons and his armor-bearer and all his men died together that same day.

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Mount Gilboa. Cursed by King David. A lonely summit, barren and arid.

On this arid summit, a king ended his life. In despair, in fear. Capitulating to forces stronger than him. Exhausted with waging war against God. In the torment of his mind, with evil foreboding and premonition, King Saul ended his life.

It had been a life on the run, reckless, heedless, with no restraining influence. Insecurity, unbridled rage and jealousy, blinding hatred, a life of defiant opposition to God.

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Today, Gilboa is still the same - barren, inhospitable, arid, grim and hopeless. David's words ring true still, hanging over the mountain like a shroud. All around is life-giving green in the plain. But Gilboa stands defiant, still in darkness.

After Gilboa, Israel walked into the light of God.......for forty years. The light of blessing, not torment. The light of yielding, not defiance. The light of security and rest, not opposition and fear.

A new fortress was born on another hill; one that survives till today.....chosen and protected by God.

David then took up residence in the fortress and called it the City of David. He built up the area around it, from the supporting terraces inward. And he became more and more powerful, because the LORD God Almighty was with him.

India's unsung? winged wonders

India boasts some really stunning birds.

Birders will often remember, with appropriate and unfading ecstasy, their first sight of an Asian Paradise Flycatcher. The phrases they use sound absolutely kitsch and totally exaggerated till you actually see one - "like a ribbon of pure-white muslin floating in the air" And some have likened the Asian Paradise to angels, and quite understandably.

Then there is the high drama and heart-stopping adrenalin rush of seeing a Lesser Pied Kingfisher on the hunt - the snowy-alpine bird hovering, and the vertical "missiling" into the water which cannot be stopped after the bird has passed a certain proximity to the water surface. For the bird, it is a matter of either coming up with a meal or going hungry, but for those who have watched it close-range, it is not a sight one can forget.

Scores more can be found - the brilliant blue-green of the Verditer Flycatcher - a colour that makes the bird so unique, the absolutely regal, deep, rich navy-blue and distinguished orange of the Tickell's Blue Flycatcher (known affectionately and fondly as just the "Tickell's Blue"), the immortally golden splash of black and yellow of the common Eurasian Golden Oriole, even the black-angelic wafting of the Greater Racket-Tailed Drongo, like a black dream floating through the air, the brilliant blue-green-red splashes of the Indian Pitta, deep inside a ravine....and so on, and so on......

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Birders usually go after the big catches - Hornbills, Flamebacks, Ospreys, Pittas, Shrikes, Kingfishers and so on.....I just wanted to write a few lines to a few birds that I do not see hogging the limelight among birders in India. These are birds that get very little play for whatever reason, but they are every bit as brilliant as the sought-after ones. I do not mean that birders do not talk about them at all, but I've seen very little action by way of photographs or passion among birders to obtain photographs and accomplish sightings.

One that comes readily to mind is the Marshall's Iora. This is a desert denizen, an arid-land cousin of the more readily seen Common Iora (which, in itself, is not getting much play among birders these days). Recently, I saw a survey of birds in the district of Barmer in Western Rajasthan - prime Marshall's Iora country. And believe it or not, there was no mention of any Ioras at all!!!!! I cannot believe that the surveyors either did not sight one or did not seek to sight one - ignorance, verb or noun? This is a delightful little bird, quite yellow, black and white like its more common cousin but also carrying the markings of a desert bird -more dull yellowish and not as showy. Thank God, even given how the bird is ignored, its status is still LEAST CONCERN.

(Source: Kolkata Birds)

There are just four species of Iora in the world today. Two of these are almost endemic to India - the Common Iora and the Marshall's Iora. The Common Iora of course does turn up in South-East Asia, but if the Marshall's Iora disappeared from the Thar Desert, it would be extinct. Well, I haven't heard of any birders itching to come back from a birding trip having found the Marshall's Iora.

Of the other two Ioras, the Green Iora, endemic to South-East Asia (not found in India) is near-threatened.

(Source : The Internet Bird Collection)

At least the survey mentioned the Desert Wheatear, which is also a species that gets almost no play. There are two Wheatears in India - The Desert Wheatear and the less common Isabelline Wheatear. Others are also found, but far less common than these two. Wheatears are lovely, small passerines, insectivorous, related to the thrushes, chats and robins.

(Source : The Internet Bird Collection)

I also did not see, in the survey, any mention of the Black Redstart, a delightful little orange and black bird with a silver streak at the eyes. I thought every village in North India had its own consignment of Black Redstarts but when I visited Dehra Dun last year I did not see any, and I never heard the bird being mentioned in any birders' lists either.

(Source : The Internet Bird Collection)

What I did see at a stream near Dehra Dun was a lovely little gleaming jewel set in the flowing white water - a White-capped Water Redstart. This would be a Black Redstart with all the trimmings :):) In any case, the Black Redstart gets no play among birders.....

Another bird I have NEVER heard mentioned anywhere, is the Long-Tailed Broadbill. The broadbills are brilliantly coloured birds related to the parrots and parakeets, with, as their name suggests, broad gapes in their bills. Of course the more brilliant Silver-Breasted Broadbill is seen in the Himalayan foothills, but its cousin the Long-Tailed Broadbill is a soothing, absolutely breathtaking splash of grass-green and yellow, very soothing to the eye, and a bluish-green long tail (which is unusual among the broadbills). I saw a video of this absolutely soothing bird in the Internet Bird Collection. It made me wonder why I have NEVER heard any Indian birder mention this wonderfully-coloured bird - I've seen the parakeets and the barbets, but the Long-Tailed Broadbill beats them all.

(Source:Eaglenest Gallery 2008)

Then chalk up another entry for one of the most brilliantly coloured birds I have NEVER seen - only seen it on photographs - the Silver-Eared Mesia. I absolutely HAVE to share these two photos, courtesy Paul Huang:

(Source : Paul Huang)

I believe Paul Huang has made this bird immortal with these two photographs. Salim Ali calls it a "brightly coloured arboreal babbler", which just skims the surface of the immortal beauty of this little babbler. Alas, again, on my trip to Dehra Dun last year, no one even mentioned this bird, let alone set off on a quest to photograph it.

The Silver-Eared Mesia has a cousin, also brightly coloured but not as splashy - the Red-Billed Leiothrix. Again, this one also gets very little play.

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Then down South, to the Western Ghats - another brilliantly coloured bird that gets far too little play - I don't see the same enthusiasm as I see for the Hornbills - the Malabar Trogon. Perhaps, being a bird of the twilight, and also remote, the trogon is a little difficult to sight. But a sighting will reveal how absolutely stunning this bird is.

(Source : The Internet Bird Collection)

Then there is the elusive Great Black Woodpecker (I love to call it that; that's what Salim Ali used to call it, but now they have this really obscure and didactic "White-Bellied Woodpecker" which is what people would name it who thought that its least interesting colour was its highlight). This is an interesting bird, found only in the Western Ghats in India. The tribals, they say, prey upon this magnificent bird for food, probably the only woodpecker that is eaten. Little wonder that, being a bird of the tall trees of the Nilgiri canopy, it "utterly forsakes" areas where logging begins. I have seen very, very few reliable pictures of this magnificent, majestic woodpecker. To me, it's the bird that put the word "woodpecker" in the species - almost twice as large and imposing as the flamebacks.

(Source : Rajiv Lather)

Other birds that get very little attention are the Chloropses, or the Leafbirds. Brilliant green all over with darkly coloured throats, there are two species in India - the Gold-Fronted and Jerdon's.

(Source: Bird Quest)

Then there is the absolutely dream-like Asian Fairy-Bluebird, an absolute vision in regal, gleaming navy-blue and black. None of these birds seem to be sought after as "catches" on birding trips, for some unfathomable reason.

(Source - Paul Huang)

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In the north-east, we have a bird that, if we manage to capture on film, will make birders so green with jealousy that will, hopefully, spark more interest than the ignorance/apathy of today. This is the absolutely rarest of the rare, simply called Beautiful Nuthatch. It's unclear whether the bird is threatened, or just happens to be so rare, but either way, it is surely one of the least seen birds in India today. I have read that it is endemic to the north-eastern Himalayas, which makes it even more prized. One or two absolutely hazy pictures exist out on the Internet - a Google search produces these fuzzy pictures. They lend a legendary, myth-like quality to this absolutely stunning bird - the brilliant pattern of azure-blue and black stripes. Wikipedia states that this is indeed the rarest of the nuthatches. Let's hope we see it in full blazing colour on a photograph or a video soon..........


(Source:Eaglenest Gallery 2008)

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Well, no offence to Indian birders....we've done a stellar job in keeping track of the absolutely stunning birdlife we have been blessed with. But I would certainly like to see more action on the species I've mentioned here.........

Here are some other wonders, from this wonderful site Eaglenest Gallery 2008), who, commendably, have undertaken a really grand tour of the Himalayas, and captured some really rare, brilliant birds:

The Fire-Tailed Myzornis


The Green Cochoa


Grandala


Leave you with a rare raptor that, thankfully, is high on the birders list (and definitely justified, for it is indeed a unique raptor), the absolutely exotic Black Baza.

(Source : Oriental Bird Images)

The cumulonimbus archives - an excerpt

In April 2008 some of us visited the awesome Iruppu falls near Wayanad.

Geologically it's just one giant gash in a mountain gorge, a great big jagged gash. The water just kind of tumbles down into the crevices of this gash.

About a few hundred metres to the top of the mountain where the descent of the water begins, there is a stage with standing water, enough to hold about thirty persons. Here a few tourists reveled in the mountain stream and let their voices intrude in the awesomeness.

The mute(?) verdant green and the jagged granite outcrops listened to their self-absorption in a place such as this (!!), and looked on them as they reveled. The water, as always, just kept falling over itself, hurtling delightfully down, twisting and turning its way down the sculpted ravine, oblivious, as it had been all through the years, to people, their presence and their intruding voices.

Every place knows. Looks on the people that come. Sees what it evokes in the onlookers. And every place has its own presence, something that it says. It never fails to say its piece.....and the ones that hear it, know. They will come again, not just to see, but more to hear.

Iruppu falls. An exquisitely lovely cascade of white water, tumbling down the gorge, reverberating in the echo pipes and the natural theater, framed in verdant green. It seemed like no one had EVER been there.....no footfalls, no one to hear its awesome voice in this forlorn, pristine valley. To speak in such a place ....would be to intrude and not listen, so out of turn.

I tried to imagine Iruppu Falls in the rain. On a murky day. Perhaps there had been endless, ageless murky morns on which the foot of a rainbow gently rested on the top of the fall. Anyone that's seen this sight would have seen it as in a dream, through the silver, dreamy tint of a raindrop on their eyelashes. Through strangely suffused sunlight, trying to break through silver-lined clouds to dispel the rainbow. I hardly believe anyone that saw this would ever forget. As it was, I never forgot what I saw - and it was almost a cloudless, still day.

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Later, driving pell-mell through the rain through Nagarahole on the way back to Mysore, a strange warp occurred. The water falling down was also white, or a strange, whitish-ashen grey, with something unimaginable behind its veil.

Criss-crossing the veil of grey were black, distorted dendritic skeletal tentacles opening out to a gigantic cumulonimbus cloud that had well and truly burst its seams. These tentacles happened to be the trees in Nagarahole, devoid of any leaves, trying to brave the gales and the sheets of water. It really was surreal, a scene not from nature but from one of Herge's original black-and-white creations. I felt I was running away from some villains that had sprung up from Herge's pen-strokes. Strange, I always remember flight with the villains in hot chase, from Herge's books.

There was no indication of the time of day in that dream-distilled downpour. The ashen grey cleared slowly, very slowly. The brown in the trees (with patches of green touched with grey) slowly emerged. Something that resembled nature, a forest in one of India's foremost national parks, finally materialised. The warp had gone.

But while we were in it, the warp told us any number of stories; all adventure-comic, all copy-book and all Herge. I was a child again.

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Every place, I believe, has strange stories to tell; and not all of them really have to do with what our eyes see; and certainly, many, many of them have nothing at all to do with the people in those places. I've learned to listen, not merely see; I've learned to tune out the people and tune in to the voice of the forms of rock, water, green and sky.

Thank you Avinash, Amit and Anil.