Through the Binoculars, Darkly
By Marjorie M. Evasco
“… and your shoulder blades will hurt
from the imperative of wings.”
~ Nina Cassian
There were four of us writing women, on our first visit to Olango Island that mid-April weekend, to watch the migrating birds refuel and rest before their long journey back to Northern China and Siberia for the breeding season. The four of us not only shared a keen sense of pleasure in the pure geometry of wings, but also this strange imperative for solitude and flight. We were thieves that summer, stealing away from the city, and stealing a space and time for magic and adventure.
Erma Cuizon, the fiction writer among us, had made arrangements with the Philippine Wetlands Conservation Foundation based in Cebu City, for us to be allowed to birdwatch at the sanctuary. That Saturday at daybreak we were on our way to Maribago, Mactan to cross the Hilutangan channel and reach Olango. We discovered during the one-hour ride from the city to Maribago that both our driver and our field guide were named Homer. The allusion was not lost to us and we were wondering what Olango Island, which gleamed emerald in the summer sun, would eventually mean to our entire lifetime’s odyssey.
Homer Gonzales, senior biologist of the Foundation, made sure we had fresh water to bring to the island, as well as other necessary provisions in our backpacks. He was greatly amused when he learned that aside from canned goods which we had bought the day before, we brought our poetry books, a starmap, and tapes of classical music. We left after making the most reasonable arrangements with the fishers whose motorized bancas were for rent to tourists and locals going back to Sta. Rosa, the main port of Olango. After the half-hour crossing, we weighed anchor on the western part of the island and walked in the low tide towards our camping grounds, careful not to step on the black sea urchins which were lazing in the water.
The first thing we did on the island was to set up camp and buy a drum of water for bathing, washing, and cooking. Erma and Reina Bernaldez set up their blue tent; Ruby Enario and I worked on our mustard and mint tent; and Homer set up his reliable military canvas tent. While we prepared the merienda after the hard, sweaty work of setting up camp around a huge talisay tree, Homer went out to the sanctuary to mark the best lookout points for the sundown ritual of birdwatching.
At 4:00 p.m., we were trekking towards the bird sanctuary, armed with our straw hats, powerful binoculars and a field telescope. Homer led us to the coral outcrop overlooking the intertidal flats, which at low tide looked like it went all the way to my home-province, Bohol. In no time at all, we were all intensely watching the sanctuary come alive with flocks of Chinese egrets, dowitchers, redshanks, curlews, sandpipers, and plovers.
Far from the rigorous concerns of city life and the business of earning a living, we knew that Olango was now allowing us to touch base with the wonder of open-eyed dreaming. Danny Reyes, poet-friend to whom I had written about my eager anticipation of this Olango adventure had replied: “I store your letter in memory as my own guide in the future, when I will also be gifted with the chance of drawing close to nature, far from the abstract concerns of university life. The urgency of flight, the honesty of the errand, survives whatever inclemency of weather. And the birds intimate the difficulty of flight not unknown to us. This is not only about birds but about our own passages as well.”
Indeed, the four of us were marking this passage in our own individual ways. It was a time for seeing — an opening of all one’s faculties to the magical. We had no other intent than this: to practice patience and be still for beauty to unfold. From our coral view deck, the magnificent sweep of wings and the commotion of birdcalls offered the very configuration of grace. And as I peered through the field telescope at a flock of egrets, I remembered Milan Kundera’s meditation in The Unbearable Lightness of Being about the sweet pleasure humans must remember every time they watch and trace the bird’s wingpath in the skies. Mine was a pleasure steeped in sadness. Was my body remembering, not the fact of having once had wings, but the primordial loss, just as I remember gills and a warm ocean home whenever I weep?
We went back to camp after sundown, taking with us the memory of wings dipped in fire and gold. We all walked back in reflective silence, our senses having been sated by the colors, sounds, shapes, and smells of our singular experience. It was thus a good thing to get back to the ritual of preparing dinner. Somehow, the act of preparing the fire, setting up the stove, and cooking the food, offered us the ballast we needed after high flight. During supper, I wondered out loud if it would possible to fulfill a wish of seeing fireflies in summer, and that evening on Olango I knew I was seriously afflicted with nostalgia. Homer, in his usual scientific manner, replied: “I’ll check. There are some trees at the sanctuary which are known to attract fireflies at this time of the year.”
At around 8:30 p.m., Homer came back with the happy news that we could go back to the sanctuary. We were cautioned, however, to be very careful because we might step on coral snakes, some of which could be poisonous. We carried our flashlights and walked a kilometer or two towards the mangrove. The water was down to our ankles and walking in the mudflats proved to be difficult because we did not have the proper walking gear; only Homer was wearing elastic diver’s socks. While we cursed our discomfort, we were gamely laughing at the ugly noises our feet were making in the mud. I decided to carry my sneakers, thinking that bare feet would allow better traction. We were thus preoccupied with the task of walking in the dark and watching out for coral snakes, when we realized that our guide was nowhere. At the instant we stood still to scan the tidal basin with our flashlights, we saw a most wondrous sight: a hundred feet away, two trees were blinking synchronously in the dark! Thousands of fireflies were doing their mating dance!
None of us moved or said a thing. In the face of wonder, words render themselves superfluous. But the trees blinked and soon beckoned us nearer. Ten feet away from the sacred trees was all the courage I could muster. From there, I felt like a child again, breathing in harmony with the rhythmic fire. We must have stood transfixed by awe for a long, long time because it was our guide who pointed out to us later that the water had risen to our shins and we had better get back.
The fact that we stood near enough to the trees gave us the gift of catching a faint flowery scent which we thought must have been the pheromones the male fireflies were emitting to attract the females to the fire dance. Homer, the biologist, smiled at our indulgence and shifted our attention to the night sky by pointing to us the Magellanic cloud. Fireflies in the sky, I thought! God’s yggdrassil holding the cosmic egg in its branches! Have we all hatched to reveal a wing?
The walk back was twice more difficult because the tide had risen to our knees. At some parts of the tidal flats where the sand was high, we stood to rest and catch our breath. It was on one of these rests when I flashed my torch two feet away from where I stood. I thought I saw a movement in the water, and the light hit upon the eyes of a small coral snake. It had orange rings around its dark sinuous body and it flicked its forked tongue this way and that to smell us. We did not move. Neither were we afraid. And it went on its slithering way, having blessed us, too, for having the capacity to stand still.
Late into the night, our bonfire on the beach blazed as a gesture of gratitude to a temporal and bountiful universe. Tending the fire was an act of committing to memory not only birdsong and wings, but also the rhythm of dancing fire on the crowns of two pagatpat trees, and the snake’s unspeaking eloquence. Around the fire we read poetry to resound the ancient praises sung by the shamans, those women and men who took the time to stop in their tracks, raise their heads to watch a bird in flight and celebrate with song or story the thrill felt in the heart’s shoulder blades where wings must have been. W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, St. John of the Cross, the Tres Marias of Portugal, Denise Levertov, Mary Oliver, Deng Ming Dao, were all with us that night around the fire. So were two goats, busy rutting behind the talisay tree.
After a leisurely midnight swim, we promised to wake each other up before sunrise to hear the birds sing their first songs. Sleeping on the sand wasn’t exactly anyone’s idea of a comfortable rest, but the sound of the sea lulled us to sleep at last.
The birds going north on the East Asian flyway need Olango Island. And whenever they arrive, they bring with them the news from the world: that the human desire to fly, sing, and augur a better future, remains alive and well. Perhaps, for as long as birds have sanctuaries and humans have nurturing grounds from where to feed their spirit, there is hope. We must put our faith on nothing less.
In keeping with the delicate demands of the bird sanctuary, we had kept respectful distance from the birds’ feeding and resting places. But the powerful eyes of the binoculars enabled us to bring the beauty of color, shape, sound, scent, texture, and motion a little bit nearer the soul. After our birdwatch at sunrise the next day, we left the wetlands, leaving no trace of our presence, in the way of birds each time they pass through Olango.
Olango Island
Such distress over the story of mist nets,
Strung 120 meters wide to catch the birds
Visiting the wetlands of Olango in April.
Time for plovers to breed in the Arctic
And this island feeds and rests them
On their northward flight to Siberia.
The scientists call this bird-branding season,
Rare chance to lure each curve of flight
And measure wingspan, winglength, weight,
Then slip the footring through for tracking
As far as Australia or back again. The procedure
Has many uses, for bird’s sake. But
There’s a catch: sometimes storms
Come in summer, and the trackers
Have to stand in lightning’s way
To free the birds,
Stranded in mist that would not give
Fair and easy passage to wings.
