SKYE stephenson

When people ask me if I have a pet, I usually say ‘no.’ But sometimes, when I sit in my backyard, I feel as if I do. Of late, my (sort-of) pet is a hummingbird – a female who I watch every morning as she flies between the two red hummingbird feeders I have placed outside – some twenty feet apart.

The intention was that one feeder would be for Ms. Hummingbird, and the other for Mr. Hummingbird. But it seems that Ms. Hummingbird dominates both. When her ruby-chested partner tries to sip a bit of nectar from either one of the feeders – she buzzes around him rapidly, and he soon departs.

Watching Ms. Hummingbird in the garden, I sense her fierceness. Her resoluteness. Her speed. Sometimes she will buzz close to me, not quite touching my body. Often she passes in front of my eyes, or just above my head.

The Aztec and Maya consider hummingbird to be the consummate warrior. Such that it was believed that dead warriors were reincarnated as hummingbirds. So too were women who died in childbirth – who were also deemed to be warriors.

It was hummingbird –  Huitzilopochtli in Nahual – who guided the Aztec on their migration from Aztlan, their traditional home, to the Valley of Mexico.

Huitzilopochtli’s nagual, or animal disguise, is the eagle.

I find it interesting that one of the largest birds – an eagle – is said to be the disguise, or mask, of the smallest of birds. Which is, it seems, its true source of power and strength – metaphorically speaking, that is.

In dream planting (Aztec style) – one calls upon hummingbird to conquer one’s own weaknesses. And for willpower.

Over the weeks and months that hummingbird has been so present in my garden, I have sometimes asked her for willpower and strength – before I go back inside to work on my book still-in-creation. A process that sometimes feels not that different from giving birth to a child.

This summer I finally read one of Martin Prechtel’s books that had been sitting on my bookshelf for a few years. This book is a multi-layered retelling of a Guatemalan Mayan myth about the Beautiful Daughter of the Sun and Moon who falls in love with a Short-Boy who speaks the most beautiful words with his silver tongue. But her love for this tiny creature of unknown parentage outrages her parent. Who promptly block the doorway of their hut, so that the Beautiful Daughter will stay inside ever more.

But a tiny hummingbird (who is in fact Short-Boy himself) manages to fly through a crack in the wall to reunite with his beloved. After some planning, the two escape – heading in the direction of the Ocean, which Short-Boy promises he knows well and will be a safe refuge for them.

Just a few steps before they reach the waters, Beautiful Daughter is seared by a lightning bolt and her body parts are cast in all directions. (This was done, of course, at the insistence of her outraged parents.)

Life on Earth ceases to be beautiful. Or fruitful. For countless time – many generations, at least.

Until she is sung back to life by tiny hummingbird/Short-Boy who is none other than the Son of the Ocean. When she is resurrected, she is a bird.

The two birds soon  make a home between the Ocean and the Village of the Sun and the Moon. And the World comes back to life.

Martin Prechtel provides five different layers, or ways, to understand this ancient myth. 

In the fourth layer, he tells the true story about a veteran he tried to heal, but his grief was so wide and deep it was as if the man had turned to ice. Until this man begins to record hummingbird songs with a tape recorder – which he would re-record at slower speeds.

When he got a job as a crew member on a mammal research ship off the west coast of Canada, he convinced the scientists to broadcast these slowed-down hummingbirds’ song underwater. Immediately pods upon pods of whales convened around the ship – cooing and singing in response.

When the scientists taped the whales’ sounds and sped them up – they found themselves listening to the likes of hummingbird songs!

I marvel that tiny hummingbirds and gigantic whales recognize each other’s songs – singing similar tunes to the water, the earth, the sun and the moon.

I have yet to hear Ms. Hummingbird sing.

Maybe I will someday.