Chapter 63: Spring

Hope and feathers...

How many feathers does it take to lift a fully laden seagull to the sky?

SPRING

The seagulls have returned to our marshland
from wherever they spent
the long cold winter.
Here now,
soaring,
scanning the landscape,
checking local dives for the freshest snacks.

Nearly two hundred years ago,
heartless winter had finally retreated to skulk
in the canyons,
leaving the fertile Salt Lake Valley
ready for cultivation.
My great-great-grandparents, who had nearly starved
during the dreary dark months
in their new rocky mountain home,
planted 
and hoped.

Then came the grasshoppers
(katydids, really, but whatever, they were starving, too).
Granny and Gramps fought
to save their precious vulnerable spring crops
from the ravaging foragers.

Nothing worked to drive off the hoards
– not burning, not drowning, not even beating with brooms –
until the hungry seagulls arrived en masse,
swooping into the fields in concert,
plucking the rapacious hoppers away from their ill-gotten feasts.

Rising up to disgorge themselves of the invaders, they returned
again and again
until the last bouncing bugger was gone.

My ancestors learned to work like the seagulls 
- en masse -
to protect each other,
to drive off existential threats.

A new threat always followed the last one.

Now the seagulls are back.

Now we are re-learning that lesson:
breaking through our own ice,
our own isolation,
and - together - driving off the plagues and the plague-carriers,
so we can survive to
tell our stories to our grandchildren.

~

Thanks for keeping me company here and sharing my adventures.

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~

Please note: All writing and photography in this post is the original work of the author unless otherwise noted, and is subject to applicable US Copyright restrictions and regulations. CJ’s Dancing On My Own Grave © 2026