The Heaven I Know

I sit on our loveseat and watch the sky through a wall of windows in our new flat. Clouds form and disperse above the Columbia River, the snow covered mountain across the river appears briefly then is covered by a cloud again, birds move across the sky, flapping, soaring and circling. When a flock of geese suddenly bank west the early morning sun illuminates under their wings a warm, amber light, exposing the sensitive down only a chick might know, a myriad of white, beige and black feathers that blend together like a watercolor. Hungry from a long night, they’re flying in formation, a little clumsy, honking their way to their favorite feeding ground. A murder of crows look small above the river and attempt to fly in formation but it’s fleeting, they come together then break apart, changing who is the lead and who follows, heading to the tall pines on the south side of the river where the day before they harassed an osprey that invaded their territory. An osprey, maybe the same osprey, circles high in the morning playground, too high in the sky to start his hunt for fish that swim close to the surface of the wide river, more about stretching his wings after a cold winter night, wings furled tight to his light body. Soon he will feed.

Then the small birds appear, coming from the trees in the foreground, Juncos and Jays and Sparrows. Compared to the larger birds they seem like children still finding their singing voices, landing on bare branches briefly, then off again, a feathered dance celebrating the morning light. And then a single bird, a robin by the looks of her fat breast of red feathers, lights upon the tallest bare branch of the nearest tree, and sings her heart out. She returns every morning at the same time. A shorter tree in the foreground is more like a bush that got confused about becoming a bush or a tree. It’s bare branches have formed a thicket of interweaving sticks that form a fortress for the smallest and most vulnerable birds, yellow-breasted Lesser Goldfinch’s that come en masse once the sun hits the tree, chirping and jumping from branch to branch near the trunk, a safe place for a respite from the sky where they experience the joy of flight but also the danger of predators.

Annie and I sit on our love seat that faces this postcard view and watch the sunrise. When it’s clear there’s an excitement about watching from our Oregon side of the river for Mt. Adams in Washington to appear, it’s snow covered shape glowing the softest shade of pastel pink, then yellow, then alpine-glow orange, before becoming a brilliant white as the sun rises higher, a geologic wonder holding a snow pack so dense that the rivers in it’s watershed never have to worry about the source of their water and the trees can grow and the fish can swim and the Osprey can eat.

Cloudy days are equally as beautiful. We’ve had a mix of different types of clouds from heavy, dark grey without a hint of blue hidden behind it, and other days, where huge white clouds float by slowly on a wide canvas of blue, sometimes moving west to east and other times from east to west. I thought I would search for the answer of how and why the wind will switch direction, and then I thought I don’t have to know. Just let it be. Then came the rainbows in a glorious mix of rain and sun and colors arching over the entire gorge, one rainbow after another, day after day. The locals said we’re only second to Hawaii in rainbows. Watching clouds is like a childhood dream; watching with wonder, no sense of time, where the only time that exists is the time it takes for the cloud to pass across my view. Maybe it’s in the shape of an animal — a whale, a serpent or horse, or nothing at all. Trying to name something that is ephemeral doesn’t stop time long enough to understand its nature.

On his deathbed, my father told me a story about clouds. When his mother died of a stroke at 72, he needed to fly to North Dakota for her funeral. My mom loaded us four kids in the car to drop him at the airport. I was 4 years old and I was confused why he was leaving so suddenly and he tried his best to explain how he was going to say goodbye to his mom because she died and he needed to attend her funeral and say goodbye. After stumbling over some details about a casket and being buried in the earth and explaining he wouldn’t see her again I asked him where she went. “To heaven,” he said. “Where’s heaven?” I asked. “Way up high in the sky beyond the clouds. Her mom and dad are there and her grandparents.”

“Is she coming back?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

We said goodbye at the gate and he boarded the plane and we stayed to watch the plane take off. Waving through the window I began to sob and was inconsolable. My mom tried to comfort me.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Dad’s going to heaven to see his mom and he’s not coming back,” I cried!

I had no memory of this, about dying and heaven and saying goodbye. As my dad laid in his hospital bed in his final hours after a long life, I think he shared this story as a gift to me, to soften my grief that would come, to speak in terms a child would understand, the way he used to do when he would tell me bedtime stories.

My dad loved birds and would pull over on his many drives on Hwy 2 between Grand Forks, North Dakota where he lived and Towner, North Dakota where he was born, to watch the migration of birds in the Central Flyway, a large land mass of of wetlands and marshes that allow millions of birds to rest and eat and breed on their way to Central and South America. Most continue on, some stay. He would look in wonder as thousands of Sand Hill Cranes, with ancient and pointed bodies, come in for an awkward landing, all necks and wings and legs.

A slow, circling raptor soared higher and higher in the sky in front of my view. A lone cloud was below it transforming from a well-formed pillow of white to wispy tendrils moving east, slowly dissipating as it approached the morning sun. The bird flew down and close enough that I could make out its white head and tail feathers and yellow talons. I had learned that Bald Eagles nested on the White Salmon River on the Washington side where it enters the Columbia directly across from us, a feeding ground of migrating salmon. The same salmon that nourished native Chinook people for thousands of years.

The Buddhist leader Thich Nhat Hahn said a cloud never dies, that death is a form of transformation, a cycle of continuation, of water to cloud to rain to river, the same river where salmon migrate and eagles feed, and the same sky where clouds form and the birds fly. My dad worked with Native American tribes much of his life and was given the Indian name Kick a Hole in the Sky. This is the same sky I look at with wonder everyday. This is the heaven my dad wanted me to know.