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“ ....‘primitives’ strive to be conscious
of the paradox ; ‘moderns ‘ strive to escape it. But
the paradox shows us an ontological maze we cannot sanely
deny, destroy, or overleap; we have to learn to walk
it again, to dance it, as our ancestors did, with grace,
strength, and awe-full wisdom.” — Barbara Mor _The
Great Cosmic Mother_
Along the southern coast of California, a great fist
of rock extends like muscle into the restive waters
of the Pacific. Called Point Conception in the vernacular
of the invaders, it was known to the Chumash and other
indigenous peoples of the then-paradise as the Western
Gate. Many of the rock faces around the missionary city
of Santa Barbara are graced with petroglyphs honoring
the unique power of this hallowed place. There are concentric
circles and spirals of infinity common to all peoples
of spirit and blood. Stick figures with wild hair exuberantly
dance the world into being. One figure is obviously
a bird of some kind, its exaggerated proportions carved
in telling scale, dwarfing the designs beneath it. It’s
a story once told in foot-long feathers gently laid
upon a trail for our exploring minds, now preserved
on the hardened pages of the prehistoric cliffside.
I’d chosen to climb the southern face of a particularly
difficult granite promontory, its slick sides all the
more dangerous from the constant ministrations of wind-borne
spray. I stayed to the oval depressions that staggered
ever upwards, obviously cut with a craftsman’s hand,
then polished like gemstone by the tips of the tempests’
swirling fingers, and thousands of years attention from
bare native feet. I was but a child, smaller and lighter
than anyone else my age. It seemed the higher I went
the more determined the winds were to wrench me from
my white-knuckled hold, and toss me like the son of
Icarus to the sand and rocks below. They kept whipping
me harder and harder, so that by the time I bellied
up to the summit I didn’t dare raise my head above its
tempting lip. I was frightened, but my fright had failed
to trap me inside the safety of my friend’s car below.
Instead, fear had driven me up the mountain higher
than muscles alone could have ever carried me. Waves
of fear washed me onto this sky-high beach, a peak where
eastward gales blew the commentary from my mind, made
me powerless to doubt and glad to be alive.
I could hardly open my eyes. They kept filling with
tears, as much from the folly of my vain existence as
from the sting of salt-laden air. It was then that I
first saw the shape, gliding towards me like an omen,
bright as the setting sun. A condor— the largest ever
North American bird, expertly riding the coast’s thermal
lifts on rigid wings! Surely I was in no danger of being
attacked, and yet I couldn’t escape the feeling that
this ancient one was coming for me! That I in particular,
was in this place on this day to face some grim reckoning.
Closer and closer it came, a direct and steady force,
unchallenged by the shifting direction of fickle winds.
It did not fly so much as it loomed, infinitely bigger
with the passage of each moment, until it was larger
than any nightmare that ever pursued me. It was as if
who I thought I was, was about to be swallowed by a
shadow— as if my very identity were about to be relegated
to sterile history, marked by the plummeting screams
of my shredded being. In a flash the bird was less than
six feet away, single-minded purpose with a nine-foot
wingspan, closing in on a pale and frightened teenage
boy. I braced for the cut and slash of razor blade talons,
the merciless hammering of heavy black wings dislodging
my precarious grip on mortal existence, alleged reality
and hopeful purpose.
And then just as quickly it passed.
For four complete laps it circled the wind blown
peak. The condor was the world, and the world revolved
around me as if tethered to the rock, or to a boy’s
unflinching spirit. It seemed to be leaving something
behind for me, even as it carried heavenward some part
of who I am.
The local Chumash spoke of the Western Gate as the
place where departing souls embark on their final journey
to Paradise, back to unabbreviated oneness, back to
their true spiritual selves. Packed aloft by the feathered
giants, the souls of the dead follow the setting of
the sun.
I, too, had died. I, too, had barely begun.
Exclusively a scavenger, the California Condor illustrates
how one must die, in order to be reborn again on wings!
And theirs are the largest wings on Turtle Island, easily
transporting them hundreds of miles in a single day.
The last free-born Condor was captured and incarcerated
in
1989 after years of being hounded by the helicopters
of frustrated wildlife biologists, with the first captive
bred birds released back into the wild some six years
later. Thanks to artificial insemination and the stiff
laws protecting them, a few of the great birds have
begun reassert their claim the sky. Their efforts seem
doubly heroic, in the face of habitat usurpation by
politically-backed California investors.
Development of private land accelerated two-fold
immediately after the last 14 wild condors were captured.
Only through diligent efforts of southern California
conservationist has any of the bird’s last and favored
habitat been protected. Areas within the Los Padres
National Forest north of Los Angeles contain the rugged
cliff sides and cover the condors prefer, with more
acreage under consideration for wilderness classification.
The sole justification for any captive breeding plan
is if without one the species would certainly perish.
The avowed aim of all such programs is the eventual
reintroduction of the species into their historic habitat.
It goes without saying, that if in the course of building
the population back up the remaining habitat is turned
over for other uses, there can be no substantial release.
No habitat, no reintroduction.
Sespe Canyon once hosted one of the handful of condor
preserves set up in the 1940’s, and remains a prime
candidate for a reintroduction site.
Researchers are also looking into the feasibility
of establishing a population in Big Bend National Park,
which takes in a long stretch of the Rio Grande River
separating Mexico from the United States. Given that
only a few hundred years ago they occupied much of the
North American continent, as far east as Florida, and
as north as Washington state, Texas canyon country is
one of several places outside of overdeveloped Southern
California where the condor could be reestablished.
As usual, the biggest threat to them there would be
indiscriminate shooting by hombres on both sides of
the border. “As usual,” I say, because for at least
the last ten thousand years the greatest threat to these
magical animals has been “ma.”
Remains of the giant condor that flew Pleistocene
skies were perfectly preserved in the tragic hold of
La Brea’s tar pits. “Gymnogyps amplus” remained
essentially unchanged for millennia, at least until
the time of the relatively recent fifteen thousand old
La Brea specimens. Our earliest human ancestors slaughtered
them at night in their roosts, when they were most vulnerable,
and robbed the eggs from their nests.
Predation by humans, both for food and as an object
of ceremony, was the essential factor in the extinction
of “amplus.” Ancient Indian ruins along the Columbia
River in north-central Oregon surrendered vast amounts
of bird bones, primarily eagle and the smaller “Gymogyps
californianus,” condor. Strangely enough, they suffered
a decrease in numbers as a result of the very rituals
that celebrated their spiritual lifeforce! It was, then,
the comparably low human population densities more than
reverence that made it possible for their proliferation
on into modern era.
They were more adaptable as well, and responded to
increased hunting pressure by nesting exclusively in
inaccessible cliffs, “fenced in” by dense and thorny
chaparral. In addition, the eggs and chicks began to
receive constant attention from both the mother and
father, alternately.
The adults began developing deceptive behavior, including
stopping first on nearby perches, before chancing disclosure
of the nest’s location by going right to it. Still dependent
on their mother at seven months and older, guardianship
of the nest was paramount.
The first historical record of a condor sighting
occurs in 1602, when Sebastian Vizcaino, a Spanish friar,
observed them feasting on a beached whale at the bay
of Monterey. Rio del Pajaro is named after a native
ceremony witnessed by Gaspar de Portolá in 1769. He
was apparently quite impressed with the imposing form
of the suffocated bird, stuffed with dried grass, wings
outstretched as if for the flight to the spirit world.
One such coastal Indian ceremony involved displaying
a captive condor on a raised altar. All the younger,
unmarried women gathered around the huge male, paying
him exaggerated compliments. They honored his size,
an avian embodiment of fertility. They petitioned his
assistance in carrying them across the seemingly vast
skies of their lives.
Afterwards, he is carried at the head of a festive
procession, to a sacrificial altar at the opposite side
of the village. There he is killed so as not to damage
the hide, which will be used in the making of an elder’s
mystical cloak. The body was then buried facing the
rising sun, the oldest women wailing and moaning for
the end of its fertile life, and the closing of another
cyclic journey.
There was no such honoring by those who came after.
Those American heroes, Lewis and Clark, explored much
of the west for the usurpers and developers that followed.
Captain Lewis missed a shot at the first condor they
spotted, but their subordinates proved they were better
marksmen by bringing down every condor they saw thereafter.
The hides and bones of many heretofore unheard of species
were shipped back to east coast museums for display.
Among these were a primary wing feather and skull of
one of the condors. They thus furthered the ignoble
tradition of killing life in order to study it.
Which brings up another twist: long after the scientific
community figured out that the condors were in jeopardy
of extinction, the gathering of eggs for ornithological
collections continued to contribute to the reduced birth
rate. In the early 1960’s when I made my own first sighting
of the great birds, a single egg could legally be sold
for as much as two hundred dollars. And right up to
the time of the last condor’s capture, nests were being
abandoned as a result of disturbance by researchers
and photographers, endangering a species in their rush
to document the struggle to save them! Scientific reductionism
is what we call the process whereby science devalues
the spirit or integrity of its “subjects”... What could
be more ironic than saving a symbol of freedom, by first
imprisoning it!
Perhaps there was no choice. Those last free-ranging
condors were dying.
Dying from bullet wounds from L.A. thrill seekers.
Dying because they fed on carcasses killed by DDT and
1080, poisons used to eradicate everything from squirrels
to coyotes in the preceding forty years. And then at
the last, dying from well-meaning but invasive techniques
of the very team assigned to insure their survival.
I’ll never forget the wrenching photograph in the local
paper, showing one such bird who died of sheer exhaustion
and terror after being run to the ground by a research
helicopter. The moral questions always arise in this
kind of case: is the survival, genetic integrity,
and essential spirit of the species best served this
way? Is reintroduction likely, or does the program free
up habitat for a developer land grab? And is the condor
really a condor, born and raised within the artificial
confines of a zoo? The rallying cry of the vocal minority
opposing the
condor’s capture was “live free or
die.” Their dignity has suffered, and surely the condor
spirit is not happy with us. The only fit compensation
will be the ecstatic sight of these birds, with their
distinctive white markings beneath charcoal wings— riding
the thermals of the Western Gate once again.
The condor brings to us a reminder of our tenuous
grip on existence— as individuals, and indeed, as a
species. As much as we’d like to pretend otherwise,
from our first breath onward our personal lives hang
on a slender thread, reliant not only on our care and
caution, but also on a healthy environment. And on the
vagaries of genetic inheritance and those microbes that
surround us. The continued existence of the human species
on this planet is no less dependent on the condition
of the natural environment, on correct individual choices,
and on the trends and whims of powers outside of our
understanding and control. The condor teaches an awareness
of our fragile state, encourages us to assume the risks
that comes with our taking wing. Our species, and each
and every one of us in our time, are called to make
an ascension. And like me that wolf-child so long ago,
we cling tightly to our lives. Cling to the advantages
of our disappearing youth, to our illusions of an existence
safe from change. Year after year we dig our nails into
the mountain, out of our fear of a formless sky.
As it is our responsibility to uncover the lessons,
and innate “power” of each lifeform, we also have
a duty to tend to the needs of that power animal. The
condor depends on the decomposing carcasses of small
to large animals for its very existence. Their was a
short resurgence of their otherwise steadily declining
population back in the 1920’s and 30’s, when a high
mortality rate among sheep and cattle herds helped offset
the eradication of the once plentiful deer and elk.
Poetically enough, their new population will be largely
dependent on domestic animals dying out on the range,
and the “death” of our investment in domesticity.
I pray they’ll be allowed to benefit from their own
lesson.
It is the condor, after all, who teaches us how to
transform death into flight.
*Jesse Wolf Hardin* is a teacher
of Earth-centered spirituality and nature magick, living
seven river crossings from a road in an ancient place
of power. His latest effort is _Gaia Eros: Reconnecting
With The Magic & Spirit Of Nature_ (New Page 2004),
a book acclaimed by Starhawk as "a must-read for
those who want to worship nature not as an abstraction
but in ways sensual, practical, and transformative.”
When not presenting at conferences and festivals he
can be found hosting seekers for retreats, quests, events,
workshops and resident internships at their enchanted
wilderness sanctuary: Animá Center PO Box 688, Reserve, NM 87830 email: mail@animacenter.org. Visit Jesse's website by going here http://www.animacenter.org/
©Jesse Wolf Hardin 2005 Reproduction
in any form is prohibited without express written permission
from the author.
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