I’m reading Terry Tempest Williams’ book, Refuge. One sentence pricks my soul. She writes, “Within every checklist there are those birds listed as ‘accidentals,’ one species, or at best a few, that have wandered far from their normal range. They are flukes in a flock of predictable migrants. They are loners in an unfamiliar territory” (p. 88).
“That’s me!” my soul exclaims. “That’s me!”
I’m an accidental person. The flamingo standing on the edge of the Great Salt Lake, wondering why she looks and acts and is so different. Why the other birds, while they might be kind to her, never fully integrate her into their flocks. Why even if they did, she’d still feel like the accidental bird, never meant to be here, standing by this desert mountain lake. She belongs elsewhere, but she’s forgotten where or how to get there. So, she continues to stand. Looking out over the water, she feels a vague stirring of recognition at the saltiness of the water and the sulphur smell of the air. She feels pulled toward something but she knows not what. Deep in her soul, she wonders where she’s meant to be.
(Photo credit: Trent Nelson)