Hi Folks,

I rally want to share this with all of you because this morning during first light I was so blessed that the incident rendered me to tears. Several times a day I will sit on our front porch to pray, intorspect and enter the deep Silence that is followed by the Warning Prayer. Part of the whole process is to find personal Sacred Time but it is also a time to watch the workings and nuances of nature unfolding. My yard, surrounded by over a thousand acres of protected lands has become an animal sancturary. Certainly I feed the animals especially when the winters are tough and in doing so the local wildlife hardly pays attention to our coming and goings. On any given day we will have deer feeding in our front yard just a few yards from our porch. The deer are usually followed by scores of turkey and then there is the endless list of coyote, raccoon, opossum, gray and red fox, flying and gray squirrel, countless birds, rabbits, turtles, along with the grand symphony of the spring peepers that emerge from the stream and cedar forest just 30 yards from where I sit in Silence and revel in the Eternal Now of life and living.

Not far from where I sit on the porch is one of our humming bird feeding stations and I normally sit within a few feet of the feeder. Since the humming birds have returned they visit the feeder several times a day, often times they will buzz around my head brushing the sides of my head with their wing beats or giving me hummingbird kisses on my cheeks. That in and of itself should be enough but this morning when the first faint light of dawn drifted in I was utterly blessed beyond all belief. Normally the humming birds are out and active at first light and because of their high metabolism they have to eat very frequently. Well this morning was very cold for this time of year. The bird baths and few puddles were glassed over with thin ice and the temperature reading on my weather station read 30 degrees. This kind of weather could literally kill a humming bird where it roosted especially if there is any kind of wind to further chill down the land.

In my life I’ve had so many amazing animal encounters from raccoons curling up on my lap to sleep on a cold night at camp to an opossum sitting on my knee to share my dinner to a black bear and I feeding side by side on blueberrys but this one is for the record books. I spotted a humming bird heading toward the feeder. Its flight was out of context, erratic and labored. I could tell that it was far too cold for the little one and he was beginning to fade to possible injury or death. At the last moment I realized that he was not heading for the feeder but directly toward me. Without hesitation the little one landed on my coat collar, jumped between my neck and the collar and settled in. I could feel his tremble-shivering, his rapid breathing and heart rate and the soft feel of his feathers against my bare neck. I kid you not the little one sat in his Tom Collar Neck Nest for at least a good five minutes. Slowly he began to warm and stop the trembling. His metabolism seemed to go back to normal and nearing the end he gave me hummingbird kisses on the side of my neck. At that point he jumped onto my collar, gave me another kiss on the ear lobe and went directly to the feeder. I was so stunned, in awe and struck speechless that I couldn’t hold back the tears. No to be honest I sobbed with utter joy.

Here is one of the most beautiful animal encounters I’ve ever had where I put it into the top 5% at least. It is a grand story of mutual trust, of life and death and the need for us to become healers and caretakers of our Sacred Earth Mother. I gave the hummingbird warmth and protection and the hummingbird gave me a deep and profound determination to fight for the Earth even harder than I have been. As I write this I’m still in shock, my hands are trembling and I feel so blessed that I cant even put it into any form of words. In a way it was also a thankyou from the collective wildlife for opening our home and yards as a sancturary of protection and peace. Here the wildlife can find escape and peace without the pressures of living on the edge of life and death.

I’m sorry but I could go on and on about all that I learned this dawning but I just had to tell someone. I told Celeste and she said to put it in my Blog so here it is and thank you so much for reading. Blessings, In Medicine, and many Prayers for you. Tom