Where the Feathers Fall

Where the Feathers Fell.

Trigger Warning: This journal entry reflects on experiences of loss and grief.

Last year I spent most of a day quietly following a spruce grouse through the forest with my camera.

He moved slowly through the brush, pausing now and then to look back at me with mild curiosity before continuing deeper among the trees.

His spring drumming song had been echoing through the forest for a couple days, calling out for an interested hen. Where he had danced his mating circle, his feathers brushing the ground, a beautiful pattern had appeared in the dust of the driveway perfectly illustrating his song and desire. An ode to spring and a celebration of new life, I'd felt.

As the days passed, I vaguely noted one day that I no longer heard his drumming. He'd found his mate, I had thought.

The next morning, on the way to the barn, I found this scattering of feathers.

The sight of those feathers settled heavy on my heart and stayed with me longer than I expected.

Loss does that sometimes. It arrives quietly, and something in us recognizes it before our minds catch up.

Later that day I recorded this short reflection about grief, loss, and some of the ways people move through it.

Some moments need to be spoken aloud.

 

When my horse, Neo, passed some years earlier, I withdrew for several days, not wanting to speak to anyone.

Eventually the grief found its way into a painting titled Through the Veil, a quiet and comforting sense of him, still present somewhere just beyond ordinary sight.

 

Through the Veil

by Sherri Phibbs

Loss has many forms.

Sometimes it asks us to sit quietly among scattered feathers.
Sometimes it asks us to speak.

And sometimes it asks us to paint.

- Sherri

Creative expression has long been one of the ways I explore meaningful lived experience. Some of that work now continues through the small gatherings hosted at The Gentle Wild.

You can find other reflections in The Gentle Wild Journal.