Owl Feather Study In Blue

Owl Feather Study In Blue 2, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Owl Feather Study In Blue 5, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Owl Feather Study In Blue 4, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Owl Feather Study In Blue 3, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Owl Feather Study In Blue 1, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota,
February 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

It was a windy 10 degrees when I found this downy owl feather blowing across a parking lot. I decided to photograph it with my BlackBerry over a break. The bright sun made the shadows pop against the texture of my lunch bucket. Feathers are symbolic. Ordinary as extraordinary.

Yesterday we drove down to Monticello, Minnesota to see the wintering Trumpeter Swans. Again, two downy swan feathers floated across the observation site and landed by my foot. I’ve added them to my feather collection. Hope is the thing with feathers. And, thanks to Yves Klein, I think I’ve entered my Blue Period.

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, February 20th, 2011

-related to post: WRITING TOPIC — LIGHT AS A FEATHER

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PRACTICE – Feather – 15min

The last feather I saw was a curved downy fluff next to Mr. StripeyPants on the bed. The two comforters are filled with the down of the goose. One is cinnamon, new and soft and fresh. The other, faded pink, old and wearing thin. We have patched the mauve one several times. But alas, there is another tiny hole somewhere. And once in a while, we see a feather or two dropped on carpet, or stuck in the thread of the flannel sheets.

I don’t have my feathers out since I moved in with Liz. With 3 cats, it’s impossible. They love to grab them between their teeth, carry them around like a mouse, shake their heads, munch a little, and drop them near their food bowls. I used to have a circle of feathers on my altar in my old apartment. I would fill a blue glass antique bottle with sand I collected from the Atlantic or Pacific, and push the hollow tips of the feathers down into sand crystals, making a semi-circle of color.

I have found owl feathers before on walks through the woods. The 2 prize feathers are Bald Eagle, given to me by an explorer friend who kayaked in the Northwestern corner of Washington State. One is white, a tail feather. I had never seen one that close before she gifted me with it. She had gotten permission from one of the Native American tribes she was visiting to pick a few up from the forest floor. She said she saw hundreds of eagles flying the area on that kayak trip.

I keep thinking of the feathers flying from the mouth of the hawk in the Galway Kinnell poem when the hawk eats the jay. And I remember one of our readers talking about seeing the actual act, hawk devouring jay, last month on a walk through the city. The closest I have come to seeing a bird of prey hunt, is an osprey on the finger of Long Lake up in the Boundary Waters. I was on a week canoe trip and my two friends had gone off hiking for the day. I stayed behind on a gravel bar beach, slipped my journal out of the waterproof covering, and wrote.

I looked up from a line to see an osprey dive under the water like a rocket, and shoot back up to the sky with a fish in her talons. I will never forget that sight. What comes naturally to her is my treasure. I watched her on the lake for what must have been 30 minutes. Then she flew off into the distance. I didn’t see her again. Some days I long for the solitude of a trip like that, to be away from civilization as we know it, on bodies of water or untrampled earth. Something about the water though, and there is a lot of it here.

Water. Fluid. And in Winter, firm.

It’s warmer this morning, rising 6 degrees since I arose from sleep. It’s supposed to reach above freezing. Then drop again later in the week. I don’t see as many feathers in Winter as I do in the Fall and Spring. Summer is best for feather hunting.

The coolest feathers I have ever seen are from the Great Grey Owls that dropped from Canada to the area around Duluth a few years ago. Liz and I drove up (along with hundreds of other birders) just to get a glimpse of the wide-faced raptors. We must have seen 30 – 40 of them that weekend, perched in elms and birch, swooping low to the ground, the way they hunt, and, sadly, one deceased in the middle of the road.

It was still warm, had been hit by a pick-up truck minutes before. We stopped to offer prayers, and a closer look at her wings, talons, and feathers. We’ll never be that close to a Great Grey again.

I read later that the Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota had a ton of calls about Great Greys that year. They had been hit by cars when they were hunting low across country roads. And then, just as quickly, they were gone. Back to Canada. I don’t think they’ve ever traveled this far South again.

-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, February 16th, 2008

-related to Topic post, WRITING TOPIC – LIGHT AS A FEATHER

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PRACTICE: Feather – 15min

The last time I saw a feather was a few hours ago. I pulled into the driveway after running an errand, and I noticed two turkey feathers stuck into the edge of a foamcore poster board advertising LIVE HERITAGE TURKEYS FOR SALE. All caps. 

Turkey feathers are big and plain, at least these ones are. I like that about them. No flash, just simplicity.

Jim find feathers everywhere. I ask him while he’s eating fruit salad for lunch, What do you know about feathers? He walks to the bookshelf and pulls down the Sibling Guide to Birds book he and the girls got me for Mother’s Day last year.

Well, he says, there are all kinds of feathers. Body feathers and head feathers. Feathers from the nape of the neck.

I ask him if he liked feathers when he was a boy. Not any more than the average kid, he tells me.

Our girls love feathers. They get a new peacock feather every other Sunday or so when it’s Growers Market season. Fifty cents each, although sometimes Mr. and Mrs. Johnston give the girls a feather each for free.

I once found a tiny pale orange feather, perfectly formed. It stood out against the gray gravel in the driveway, and for weeks I kept it in my car in the well between the bucket seats. I twirled it between my fingers while waiting in the drive-thru at the pharamacy or the parent pick-up line at school.

I now know that the feathers in the outermost tip of the wing are called Primaries. Or are they Secondaries?

There are tail feathers and rump feathers. Jim mentions Scapulars, and when I look at him for clarification, he says, Shoulder, scapula…you know, just remember, I-broke-my-scapula.

I think of football players and their shoulder pads and the playing fields we walked across at Valley High School in the days before any of us had our drivers licenses. So green and manicured, those fields.

I don’t recall ever seeing a feather on that carpet, but I do remember my best friend’s older sister’s collection of feathers. She kept them on a nightstand near her reel-to-reel. We snuck into her bedroom and snagged a few, braided leather to the quill and wore them in our hair or made roach clips out of them.

One of the first feathers I ever saw was the light gray of the guinea hen, distinguishable by its many white dots. I picked up handfuls in Grandma’s yard one afternoon, walked in through the kitchen. Mom and Grandma sat at the table smoking cigarettes and when they saw what was in my hands, they both yelled, Get those dirty things out of here, NOW!


-related to Topic post, WRITING TOPIC – LIGHT AS A FEATHER

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WRITING TOPIC – LIGHT AS A FEATHER

 

Let’s talk feathers. Light as a feather, feather in your cap, feathered pillows, feathered hair. I’ve been collecting bird feathers since 1984. I find them on long walks through the woods; I find them in the sidewalk cracks along city roads.

Feathers have been used in every culture since the beginning of time. In South American headdresses, feathers are a status-symbol, worn on ceremonial or ritual occasions. The head is to be protected and respected. It’s where the Soul or Spirit resides.

The Fool archetype in the Waite-Smith Tarot deck sports a red feather. In many Native American cultures, feathers are sacred, a universal symbol of Spirit and flight. And feathers adorned headdresses, Talking Sticks, and pipes.

Don’t be surprised if feathers are part of your history. They are common in heraldry, and tournament helmets were often ornamented with feathers, making the plume the family crest for many families. Ostrich feathers were commonly used which signified willing obedience and serenity. (Did you know “plume” is a term usually reserved for a grouping of five or more feathers?)

Quetzalcoatl, the god of human sustenance, penitent, self-sacrifice, and re-birth was portrayed as a snake covered with the iridescent-green feathers of the quetzal bird. These feathers also made up the insignias of Mexican kings. In some depictions, he wore a headdress made of black crow and red macaw feathers, a reference to the Night or Dead Sun. Each feather in the headdress signified an act of bravery.

In Wiccan culture, different colored feathers represent different magical qualities. Green feathers symbolize money, prosperity, and growth. Red are for vitality and courage. The eye on the end of the peacock tail feather stimulates clairvoyant vision. The rooster’s two prominent tail feathers (called sickles) are symbols of the God and Goddess.

According to Egypt Art, in ancient Egyptian culture, the Feather of Maat represented truth, justice, morality and balance:

It was pharaoh’s job to uphold Maat. When a pharaoh died, Maat was lost and the world was flung into chaos. Only the coronation of a new pharaoh could restore Maat.

The Egyptians believed Ieb, the heart, was the center of all consciousness, even the center of life itself. When someone died it was said that their “heart has departed.” It was the only organ that was not removed from the body during mummification. In the Book of the Dead, it was the heart that was weighed against the Feather of Maat to see if an individual was worthy of joining Osiris in the afterlife.

Many writers tells stories of feathers. In the children’s book Dream Feather by Viento Stan-Padilla, a little Indian boy hears a song drifting down from the sun. Ancient stone etchings on cave walls foretold that a feather would be his guide. If he followed it, he would return to the Source. And if you have read Mary Oliver’s book Owls and Other Fantasies: poems and essays, you have seen the delicate and detailed photographs of feathers taken by Molly Malone Cook. 

What do feathers mean to you? Do you pick them up when you see them, recognize the polka dots of a Flicker feather, brush them away when they fly out of an old down comforter? Have you ever been in love and felt light as a feather?

Did your grandmother wear hats with feathers? Do you insist on sleeping on a feather pillow. Have you ever studied a feather’s design while holding it up to the sun, seen an ostrich feather in your family coat of arms, stuck a feather in your cap and called it macaroni?

Do three 15 minute Writing Practices on everything you know about feathers. Start each Writing Practice with:

The last time I saw a feather…. 

The first time I touched a feather…

The coolest feather I’ve ever seen…

If you get stuck, remember what a feather looks like floating on the wind. Go to one of the many feather links in this Topic post to jog your imagination. Or make a point to notice the cardinal at the afternoon feeder, pecking at a black oil seed. And the way her tufts blow in the winter wind.

   

 

Shield Of Courage, art by QuoinMonkey, all photographs Minneapolis, Minnesota, November 2007, photos © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Courage shield was created out of handmade paper, bent red willow, feathers, bone, brass, wood. I was told the skull was cormorant by the person who gave it to me. Feathers are Canadian Geese and Wild Turkey. The art was created in the early 1990’s for a papermaking class. The paper was made by hand out of the brown bladelike leaves left on Minnesota Day Lilies in the Fall.

-posted on red Ravine, Monday, February 11th, 2008

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