Size Matters Not
Alright, stand up and heels to the wall. Step off around eleven steps, heels to toes, and look at that length. A California condor's wingspan is about nine and a half feet, the largest land-based bird in the Western Hemisphere. (What's bigger than that?! Stay tuned. I will share later). They can fly to 15,000 feet and once ranged from Mexico to British Columbia. A single lead shotgun pellet will kill them and is still the most common cause of mortality accounting for half of all deaths in the wild. They are social -- the young learn from their parents over a span of years. Forty years ago there were only twenty remaining. We have around 500 now. Big and rare.
The smallest of all birds is the bee hummingbird, buzzing around the forests of Cuba. They are also endangered and rare. They weigh less than a dime -- .07 ounces full grown and have a wingspan of 1.5 inches -- essentially half the size of the ruby-throated hummingbirds buzzing around your yard. Think about a flying relative of the dinosaurs with feet and eyes and feathers and bones and all the other necessary accoutrements for a warm blooded critter that weighs less than two grams. Daily requirements include half their weight in nectar and eight times their weight in water to run a heart rate as high as 1,000 beats a minute. Divine machinery.
Let's continue: If the Earth were a grape, Jupiter would be the size of a basketball. The most massive star known is R136a1, coming in at 230 times the weight of our sun. Living in the Tarantula Nebula, it's relatively close at 160,000 light years away. It's young. Humans are born small and get bigger. Stars do the opposite. By the way, the sun is 99.8% of all the mass in our solar system. We are smaller than specks. Relatively.
We operate in a very thick fog regarding big and small, and we operate merrily with misconceptions on a grand scale as well. I ask people all the time how long is a million seconds and the answers are all over the place. (It's eleven days). The follow up question is how long is a billion seconds. NOBODY gets this right. (It's 31 years). I used the phrase "relatively close" a moment ago and nobody blinked. "Relative" is the heart of this little chat. The importance of anything is only what you assign. I may be pegged as a heretic for not recognizing religion or some universal transcendent principles that must be "most important," but the case can be made for anyone's embrace of the tiny or the huge, or the significant and insignificant, as your choice and your business. Transcendence is yours to determine. Your church may be a place or it may be your children. Totally your call.
Four years ago, I was quoted in the local paper as saying "Ornithology crosses into poetry at some point," by a journalist from a conversation I don't recall having, but I'm happy to recognize that is how my brain worked back then too. "Relatively close" is shorthand for knowing far from near, then from now; we function well not knowing precision scales of things as they don't much matter in the day to day. But sneaking around in our perception is an infinite depth, if we pause and notice. I highly recommend spending time in that pause, whether it be marvelling at birds or sailing or singing or hiking with your kids or helping neighbors or whatever connects you the individual with the universal. Late summer is especially good for this... And poetry is underrated. As are those flying dinosaur things. Hello! Flying animals?! (Um yeah, bats? Definitely going to chat about those).
Stay in touch,
Fly slowly,
Collect nectar.
