A seabird, or a songbird.

On flight paths, migration, and movements.

Young Izzy. The Virgin Islands, early 2000’s.

“The Arctic tern has the longest migration of any animal. It flies from the Arctic all the way to the Antarctic, and then back again within a year. This is an extraordinarily long flight for a bird its size. And because the terns live to be thirty or so, the distance they will travel over the course of their lives is the equivalent of flying to the moon and back three times.” ― Charlotte McConaghy in her novel, Migrations

I am almost thirty, and I wonder whether I have flown to the moon yet. As a Sagitarrius moon and an Aquarius sun, I am certainly no stranger to the wander, or the wind.¹

The Arctic terns should be flying over the Southern Atlantic Ocean right about now, approaching Antarctica’s Weddell Sea. Their migratory journey takes them to every ocean, and to the vicinity of every continent.² These epic seabirds are the most well-traveled creature on the planet.

Where I sit right now, at my parent’s kitchen table in suburban Atlanta, there are roughly 121 bird species in the area.³ My father tends to 12 bird feeders in the backyard, each one visited daily by Eastern Bluebirds, American Robins, Brown Thrashers, American Goldfinches, and more.

I am on my annual flightpath—a southern migration that sends me from my nest in Port Angeles, Washington first to the southeast U.S. for hometown nourishment, next to the tropics of Latin America for soul food, then back home in time for the final snowfall and the emergence into spring. 

I’m not the only one flying. The Yellow Warbler (Setophaga petechia) follows this same route. They summer in the Pacific Northwest, up to the northernmost reaches of Canada and Alaska, and are known to pass through the southeastern U.S. as stopover habitat before continuing their winter migration to Central and South America, going as far south as Colombia. 

I will meet it there. 

Flightpath of the Yellow Warbler.

“...migratory creatures are not taking readings from technical instruments nor mathematically calculating angles; they are riding waves of sensation, responding attentively to allurements and gestures in the topographical manifold, reverberating subtle expressions that reach them from afar. These beings are dancing not with themselves but with the animate rondure of the Earth, their wider Flesh.” –

David Abram

, Creaturely Migrations on a Breathing Planet, Emergence Magazine 

Migrating creatures move to breed, to feed, and to keep themselves alive. 

But how do they know when, and where, to go?

They feel.

They feel it in every feather and hollow bone.

They feel through their deep somatic attunement with the Earth; a complete lack of separateness, or rather, total oneness. Temperature, sunlight, wind, currents, salinity, electromagnetism, the opening of a flower’s bloom—these signals interface with their internal guidance systems in ways that continue to mystify Western science.

Not everything is meant to be known.
An intentional evasion
on behalf of Creation.

I say keep it up,
or rather,
keep it out
of our view.

Recent research suggests that monarch butterflies may orient themselves on their 2,500 mile journey by the position of the sun, using their body’s circadian rhythm, or internal clock, to vary the angle at which they position themselves.

Salmon, they say, navigate by using the Earth’s magnetic field as an internal compass, then use olfactory intelligence to smell their way back to their natal stream.

Compass,
clock,
calendar,
map.

These are human technologies and inventions. We must attempt to comprehend and describe this deeply embedded, internal intelligence using external tools we’ve created; we must attempt using our minds to describe something embodied. I wonder how the warbler would describe it. When I see one, I will ask.

“Our reliance upon such instrumental metaphors seems to stem from our civilized assumption of a neat distinction between living organisms and the nonliving terrain that they inhabit, an unambiguous divide between animate life and the ostensibly inanimate planet on which life happens to locate itself. As long as the material ground is considered inert—as long as the elemental atmosphere or ocean is viewed as a passive substrate—then the long-range migrations of other animals can only be a conundrum…

…Instead of hypothesizing more metaphorical gadgets, adding further accessories to a crane’s or a salmon’s interior array of tools, what if we were to allow that the animal’s migratory skill arises from a felt rapport between its body and the breathing Earth?” –

David Abram

, Creaturely Migrations on a Breathing Planet, Emergence Magazine

They are the traveler and the route. 
The dancer and the rhythm. 
Sentience and sensation.

It is our separateness—from our Body, from our Knowing, from the Earth and from its complete Aliveness—that gets in our way. Just as it is our connection that will open it. 

They say that humans are the only creatures who understand their own mortality. I say that humans are the only creatures who question their own path—who question why they are here, and where they must go.

I believe that the more we tend to our somatic wisdom—our brilliant, animal body—and the more we allow it to converse with the sensationally alive Earth, the clearer everything will be.⁴

May our flight paths converge
so that you and I,
me and we
may breathe
and breed
and birth

the world
over.

“And this bird you cannot change.” – Lynyrd Skynyrd

A little southern flavor never hurt a newsletter.

This winter, I’ll fly to Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia to nourish relationships, to feed my spirit dancing on surfboards and salsa floors, to come up for air beyond the far too rigid U.S. mainstream.

It doesn’t take much to move me.

I move for warmth—I was conceived in the tropics of Hawai’i, born in sunny Southern California and largely raised in the snug and sticky Georgia heat. I cannot deny what warm water and a cold coconut does to my skin and my spirit.

I move to connect with my parents—I am an only child living in the opposite corner of the country, who, along with her folks, desires integration into one another’s mundane daily experience of living, even if only for a few weeks a year. Who utilizes the privilege of remote work as a way to temporarily stomach a dominant culture that doesn’t encourage multigenerational household living or collective units of care, that instead feeds a $450+ billion elder care industry.⁵ (The complexity here is overwhelming.)

I move because it is my name—Celia. Specifically, my middle name. My great-grandmother’s name. Celia, whose Hebrew name was Sephora, meaning beautiful bird. In the Jewish tradition, you honor your ancestors by passing on their names to your children.

Celia, Sephora—
lovingly called Grandma Chippie.

Celia, Sephora—
who like me, also loved
to bake pies,
and make every move with purpose.

Celia, Sephora—
one of seven sisters yet only one of three
who took flight from Eastern Europe in 1915.
Who like so many creatures,
had to move
to stay alive.

As I carry my Osprey backpack on my travels,
I remember that I always carry her too. 

Grandma Chippie. My spirit bird. Miami, 1970s.

“A group of people moving in the same direction thinking the same thing is a cult. A group of people moving in the same direction thinking different things is a movement.” – Loretta Ross

Movement is clearly on the mind. The movement of all creatures, us included. The many ways and means that creatures move, have been moved, have had their movement taken away. The many directions we move, and who gets left behind.

Movement is not always beautiful, nor natural. Displacement; exile; captivity. This is an interwoven, ongoing history.

I think of the movements we are called to join, which often have their roots in the forced, inhibited, or oppressed movement of others. Across borders, up socioeconomic ladders, beyond bars. You name it, it involves motion. Movement means motion, motion means change, and we need all of us—opening, widening—for the momentum to flow. We don’t have to all agree for us to move together.

“We all have different proximities and relationships to what’s unfolding in Palestine and Israel. We all have very different relationships and I would never think that one person’s relationship should be someone else’s…we absolutely are entitled to our feelings exactly as we are…

We don’t wait to feel hopeful…we don’t wait to feel clear and we don’t wait to feel resolved…we act for justice as a way to move through our feelings, to reach toward each other…the idea that we would wait until all of our feelings are neat and sorted before we act is a fantasy… 

When [future generations] ask us, ‘Where were you, and what did you do?’…I want to be accountable with my answer and not say, ‘I don’t know, it was confusing.’ – Morgan Bassichis, Jewish Voice for Peace

I know where my internal compass points. Amidst every perspective I can possibly consider, amidst the wild relational complexity, the enormity, the winds and the storms that shift me off course—I know where my internal compass points.

“I’ve been thinking about how painful it is to feel the distance between our moral compass and what it is we’re witnessing. I’ve been thinking about how necessary it is to notice our own responses, our own sensations, our own selves in order to truly and honestly witness that of others.

And, I’ve been noticing how it is only when I tend to what’s close in first that I can be with the complexities, the nuances, the not so far-right or far-left, the both-ness, the absolute desire to not turn away from the humanity of anyone, any place, any kind of hurt that presents itself as real. It is only when I stay connected to my own moral compass, even when it is not so straightforward or clear-cut, that I can witness others more clearly, without my own gunk creating residue on the clarity needed to see the truth. ” –

Lisa Olivera

, Human Stuff

My mother, age 17, and some ducks. Miami Lakes, 1978.

“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy.” — Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

I think of the privilege within the entirely elective movement I’m currently undertaking—travel. A metaphorical migration with a passport that allows me entry almost anywhere. 

I think what I can do at the very least is decolonize my heart and mind.

I think what I can do at the very least is celebrate the exorbitant beauty of this world as a survival strategy.

I think what I can do at the very least is tend to my somatic intelligence so that I may follow my truest path and make my ancestors proud. 

I think what I can do at the very least is cast a spell each morning so that this path may lead to the Highest Good. 

I like to think back to when my Lover and I were sitting on the couch before I left, looking out into the garden as little birds landed and picked on fallen seeds. He asked me what kind of bird I’d be. 

I am still learning my answer,
but I know three things:

It is migratory,
a seabird,
or a songbird.

Thank you for listening
to my voice.

1. To generalize, Sagittarius, a fire sign, is known for having a “passport-in-your-purse” energy. Aquarius is an air sign.

2. Check out the Arctic Terns’ migration route.

3. Source: Audubon Society.

4. “God is inside you, all around you, and up above. Knowing, showing you the way.” – Sturgill Simpson

5. Source: Grand View Research.