It’s turning fall here earlier than usual—the rains continued their visit in August in ways that people of central Alaska are not accustomed to, and people are beginning to complain about the constant grey skies. I still love it—I gave up ideas of summer long ago and look forward to the fall because the world starts to really shine in these parts as fall takes hold of the landscape. The light is keener, slanted high but noticeably different, making things look a little more chromatic, shinier when the sun does break out. There’s still green in the leaves but now it’s complemented by new hues of cadmium, brighter in the sun than their neighbors. There’s a coolness in the air in the morning that grows a bit stronger each day. And today driving into town, my son noticed it before me—termination dust, the first dusting of snow on the tops of the mountains appeared through the clouds. About two weeks early at least. But somehow I didn’t mind it for a minute—odd in how up until a few years ago it haunted me when it would first appear. Now it just feels familiar, like ah, there it is. Welcome back, friend.
The geese are moving about, as if debating if it’s the right time to move on, hanging out in strange patches of grass around town, walking alongside traffic at the school drop-off as if this is what they always do. From time to time you can hear sandhill cranes and snow geese also flying overhead south, but they aren’t as sociable with the world below as the Canada geese seem to be.
What stays constant through the summer and fall into winter are the birds that come to visit my ledge—and yet in the last two years of pandemic life, they have changed and moved on too, in different ways. The first year we had the regular visitors of steller’s jays, who had been coming to the house for years. That first summer of 2020 they were so gregarious that they would come to the window, and eat out of my hand after a while of standing still. Nuthatches and chickadees have always been constant, a few juncos, but the robin and woodpeckers haven’t been as social this past year, although I did spy a woodpecker this week, which felt like a welcome visit from an old friend.
But the most frequent bird visitor to the ledge feeding now are the magpies—several of them, who come one at a time, sometimes two, one time four, growing sleeker from the somewhat scruffiness of their summery youth. Yesterday one came to sit on the ledge while the wind blew noisily and the rain decided whether to let loose once again on the already wet leaves of the birches. The long tail of the sitting—hunched, really—magpie was bent upwards repeatedly by the wind—as if the feathers are so longing for air and sky that they moved of their own accord skyward, and the magpie’s body had to admonish them to stay put.
I read recently that people of the middle ages read every text—and perhaps other visuals as well—on three levels: literal, allegorical, and anagogically—i.e., in a spiritual or mystical sense. And I considered how our world can barely hold on to understanding on one level, with binaries and zero-sum choices—literal or metaphorical, and pat ourselves on the back for not being so foolish as to take a description of a miracle or superstition described in a text at face value. I can’t help but think we are missing so much in a committed insistence on seeing only one idea, one image when there are fractals to explore. Nature/culture and we are separate from a ‘natural’ world, no longer influenced by the kin around us in animals, plants, trees turning yellow in large patches of early autumn. What if we could allow that the moon is not simply a satellite reflecting the sun, but something that lets a little lunacy reach into us, a silvery tug at our own tides, and we accepted that there will be high tides of feeling followed by an anodyne pull backward? We insist that we exist on a fulcrum between—not of the earth but on it, inured to all the winds and lunar intricacies whose webs we navigate but never acknowledge.
I didn’t grow up with magpies in Oregon—for some reason they don’t cross the Cascade range very often, but you could see them in Eastern Oregon from time to time. Still not very commonly. Another place I first witnessed them is in the Santa Inez valley in southern California, the only place in the world where they have yellow bills.
But when I lived in Scotland is when I became more familiar with their chatty behavior, as common as crows on lawns and in parks. That’s when I learned the superstitious rhyme for magpies: one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret that’s never been told.
Magpies are common in Anchorage, and there have been half a dozen at least visiting for the last few months. Last week a magpie left one of its wing feathers on my porch, I’m sure by accident. I’ve kept it on my desk, and each time I glance at it I think about the animal it came from—that same feather had helped a bird see the tops of trees from above. Sky and wing. I later read that the name for the Isle of Skye in Scotland comes from the Gaelic word for ‘winged.’ I couldn’t stop thinking about the mix of sky and wing, this gift on my porch.
So I started reading about the symbolism of magpies.
The first written reference to a magpie comes from the 13th-century poem, The Owl and the Nightingale, in which the two birds debate who is superior, by bringing in other birds as witnesses to their claim. The poem is an example of Middle English debate poetry, a form also known as a verse contest. Sources note that scholars have not been able to reach a consensus on the enigma of the poem—without information on the author or where it originated, the symbolism is thought to be lost.
The etymology of magpie comes from the nickname for Margaret, Mag, and pie, which also originates from Latin pīca, related to pīcus, or woodpecker.
While many descriptions of mag- makes reference to to the name Margaret, why the name was so widely associated with chatter is not often discussed. The origins of the name Margaret come from earlier forms such as Margarita in Latin, meaning “pearl.” Moving from Sanskrit to Persian, Greek to Arabic, there are similar occurrences and associations with names akin to Margaryte. In Old English, the name became meregrot—literally “sea pebble.”
In many western traditions, magpies are often thought of as tattlers or thieves, a sign of ill omen. In Irish folklore, to see a single magpie is bad luck (which follows where the rhyme may have originated from), but the effect of this can be removed if a person who sees it removes their hat. But in China, the magpie is a symbol of good luck, its cry announcing good news or the coming of welcome visitors, a bird of happiness and good fortune.
Magpies are renowned as collectors of shiny objects, curating their own assemblages of life from objects they find around them. Maybe it’s for this reason I’ve always admired them—recognizing the compulsive need to collect objects of beauty or curiosity they find around them, wanting to keep them close, build a home with the assemblage. I could never find blame in an animal that wants to collect bits of beauty as part of their daily routine.
I came across an essay by the writer Stacey D'Erasmo, recounting her year of writing anonymously under the pseudonym Magpie. Her premise was to write twice a week about simply what catches her eye, and she found it made the world infinitely beautiful. Writing this way freed her in ways that she was surprised by—she writes:
As the Magpie, relieved of my ego or at least carrying it more lightly, I was astonished by how abundant and interesting the world became, and I am a person who is generally very interested in the world. And yet, the vividness of what I saw when not expecting anything or anyone to look back was so beautiful, so strange, and so powerful. It felt like waking up to a much wider world than I had ever been able to perceive before.
Perhaps it’s in that quality of interest where magpies are so alluring—their ability to see shiny things in a crowded landscape. Like their black and white plumage, so stark until you see the surprise of iridescent green-to-almost-violet of their long, long tail, that seems to always know how to find the tangle of light that will show off its radiance. And perhaps it’s also in that they don’t seem to be bothered by the world we claim to live in, but take of it what they can find of interest, with no barrier between their ‘natural’ nest and our ‘cultured’ objects. They find the shiny and reflective, the odd and the unexpectedly interesting, and make it a part of themselves, their lives—whether for one season or longer.
Perhaps that is also why the fall’s return, that shiny angle of light, is so alluring—because it wakes up the green, spotlights the changes happening around us, making the fall unignorable. The birds begin to fly and call overhead with activity once more as they leave for warmer latitudes.
It’s a magpie type of season with so much to see and collect, observe and keep close on our desks for the coming winter months—when the world looks black and white, but occasionally, you remember the iridescence that will still be there when a slant of light hits just right.
When I was in Crested Butte last year for my residency the first thing I noticed were all the magpies. Of course we have many here as well, but they were particularly abundant there, and all around the house I was living in. Such that, to commemorate that magical month, I had a magpie tattooed onto my shoulder, a specific magpie, who stood on the fence watching me while holding a chunk or remains of a sparrow in his beak. I think they are wonderful birds, and this is a wonderful piece.
I really enjoyed these observations about Alaska. I know very little about this state, thanks for writing.