Dreaming of Birds

Alexander Wilson, Short-eared Owl

This morning I woke later than usual for work, rising out of a dream set in dark hallways where family members passed by like walkers in a mall. But the image that remains with me most vividly is that of a big room with a wooden stairway and large wooden arches framing pane-less windows open to the sky. Crouching in a large area under a landing of the stairway were three huge, beautiful birds, an eagle, an owl, and a bird I could not identify. While the setting of the dream was dark--dark wood, dim room, dark sky--the emotional atmosphere of the dream was suffused with awe and surprise. The birds' feathers glistened, reflecting some faint light, perhaps from somewhere in the room, perhaps from the sky, and the birds were aware but unafraid of the humans standing nearby.

Audubon, Golden Eagle

My dream self was standing slightly above the birds, looking down, as if from steps on the staircase. As I watched, the birds prepared to fly, each stretching its wings fully before launching into the sky. The eagle flew first, up through the wooden arches, then the unknown bird, almost transforming its shape as it passed closely overhead, revealing a long neck and a narrow head. It let out a wild, piercing, plaintive cry as it flew. Briefly, the mood of the dream shimmered into loss, grief, a slight hint of fear. Finally, the owl--a tremendously powerful bird with intelligent, limpid brown eyes set in a large round head with feathery ear tufts--spread its wings and flew up. However, just as it reached eye-level, it turned its head toward me and deliberately spoke. Then it flapped its large, silent wings and disappeared into the sky.

No, I do not remember the words of the owl; I'm not sure that I understood them in the dream. I woke from the dream, dumb-struck, my body heavy on the bed as if the sentience required for moving it still lagged behind in that other, shadowy land.

What might be the significance of this dream? I wondered later, as I sat in the Learning and Tutoring Center where I tutor part-time. It's the end of finals week, and the lab was quiet. I remembered that in many cultures throughout history, owls have been associated with the dead, as messengers of death or omens of evil; others have viewed the owl more positively:

For centuries, all around the world, humans have had a continuous and strong cultural relationship with owls, traceable back 15 000 years to caves in France. Some cultures view owls as omens of bad luck, sickness, and death, while others view them as creator beings, helping spirits, having profound wisdom, oracular powers, or the ability to avert evil. (David Johnson, The Little Owl Conservation, Ecology and Behavior of Athene noctua, Cambridge University Press)

The eagle has less ambiguous associations. In most cultures it is viewed as a symbol of bravery, power, immortality:

As the supreme master of the air, the eagle is one of the most unambiguous and universal of all symbols, embodying, as it does the power, speed and perception of the animal world at its peak, together with majesty, domination, victory, valour, inspiration, and spiritual aspiration. . . .Soaring toward the sun, the eagle seemed a creature capable of carrying souls to heaven--the origin of the Roman custom of releasing an eagle from the pyre of emperors. (Jack Tresidder, The Complete Dictionary of Symbols, Chronicle Books, 2005)

Its opposite is the owl, the bird of darkness and death. (Juan Aduardo Cirlot, translator, Jack Sage, A Dictionary of Symbols, Courier Dover Publications, 2002)

Audubon, Anhinga

And what about that unknown bird, the second one that took to flight, with its narrow iridescent head and long, snake-like neck? An anhinga? The anhinga is also highly venerated in some Native American cultures. According to Peyote and the Yankton Sioux: The Life and Times of Sam Necklace, by Thomas Constantine Maroukis, the "stylized bird" is "represented [in Peyote art] in swift flight, headed skyward and carrying prayers."

I entertained my co-workers for a few minutes by describing this dream and contemplating its significance. Then, with no students to tutor, I opened up the book I had brought this week to read between tutoring sessions: Czeslaw Milosz's poetry anthology, A Book of Luminous Things. The bookmark was placed where I had previously left off reading. The next poem? David Wagoner's "The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct," a powerful poem about Alexander Wilson, the "Father" of American ornithology, and an ivory-billed woodpecker he had wounded and brought home to sketch. The opening lines of the poem describe Wilson's carrying the bird through town, under his coat:

When he walked through town, the wing-shot bird he'd hidden
Inside his coat began to cry like a baby,
High and plaintive and loud as the calls he'd heard
While hunting it in the woods, and goodwives stared
And scurried indoors to guard their own from harm.

And the innkeeper and the goodmen in the tavern
Asked him whether his child was sick, then laughed.
Slapped knees, and laughed as he unswaddled his prize,
His pride and burden: an ivory-billed woodpecker
As big as a crow, still wailing and squealing.

The poem continues to describe the ivorybill's desperate and futile attempts to escape and the artist's equally stubborn will to capture the bird's image on paper. The powerful impact of the poem is magnified by our knowledge that the bird that Wilson shot--and ultimately killed--to record with ink and paint became extinct around 1880, with only a sighting or two in the twentieth century. There have been some disputed sightings in the twenty-first century, but the search continues for unambiguous evidence that the bird has survived the devastation of its habitat.

Wilson, Ivory-billed Woodpecker and Pileated Woodpecker

What to make of these connections? I'm not sure. However, the dream and the poem that followed do remind me of how we have plundered the natural world, sometimes with the best intentions but with just as devastating consequences as if our actions had been evilly intended. Alexander Wilson left behind the most beautifully-captured illustrations of birds and descriptions of their behavior and habitats. To do that, however, he sometimes disregarded the needs of the bird, tamping down his own empathetic responses to his subject. Wilson wrote about the ivory-billed woodpecker: "While engaged in taking the drawing, he cut me severely in several places, and, on the whole, displayed such a noble and unconquerable spirit, that I was frequently tempted to restore him to his native woods. He lived with me nearly three days, but refused all sustenance, and I witness his death with regret." As a short biography of Wilson indicates, the self-taught ornithologist had a great affection for his subjects, as "he notes the habits and habitats of birds as if they were companions rather than objects of study." Yet to complete that study, the ornithologist often shot the bird to facilitate the process of recording the bird's image.

One ornithologist shooting a bird is no real threat to the natural world, but the attitude that one has the unquestionable right to take the life of another animal--or to destroy the habitat in which it lives-- is a danger. Hence, the long list of animals made extinct, not by some lengthy natural-selection process, but by the unimpeded hubris and greed of humans.

But I digress from my dream. Perhaps the owl was calling my name; in that case, the dream could be a premonition of my death. Or perhaps the owl meant to comfort me; recent suffering in my extended family and concerns about circumstances in my own nuclear family have made me a little anxious. Or perhaps the owl spoke to startle me to attentiveness. The brain continues clicking away while our body sleeps. Psychologists at Harvard University are studying how the brain works during sleep, how sleeping facilitates memory and learning:

The search for answers focuses around a surprisingly small s-shaped area deep in the brain, called the hippocampus. Most neurologists consider this the storehouse for new facts. [Harvard psychologist Matthew] Walker believes that, during sleep, the hippocampus carries on a conversation with the main thinking and organizing part of the brain, the so-called cortex that sits over the top and front of human brains...

Other research has shown that memories seem to be consolidated both during dreamless sleep at the beginning of the night and during dreams that usually occur later. How does this tie in with the conversations between hippocampus and cortex? One idea is that new memories move out of the hippocampus and into the cortex during dreamless sleep earlier in the night. When new and old memories meet, they mix in bizarre and novel ways we call dreams. (William J. Cromie, "Learning While We Sleep and Dream," Harvard Gazette Online, May 3, 2007)

As I left work this afternoon, I was especially alert to the natural world. As I approached the parking lot, I noticed a blue bird, perched on a metal sign post. It sat there for a few minutes as I opened my car door and slid into the driver's seat, heading home.

Alexander Wilson's Work:
"Alexander Wilson, American Ornithologist," American Studies at the University of Virginia.