5/8/25
A transcendent moment. What is really going on here?
It happened on a Saturday. I wasn’t really expecting it and certainly didn’t plan it, but as with all the finest and exciting moments, it found me.
I found myself watching with rapture as a magnificent pelican glided gently over our lake, slowed, almost hovered, and then calmly settled onto the water.
Now, outwardly, there is nothing remarkable about this. Pelicans pull this trick all the time, but walking along, I had time to ponder. I began to turn my rusty, creaky, decrepit mind to the logistics of it all.
An adult pelican (the screen reliably tells me) is about 10 kilograms for round figures. Some weigh more, some less. That's just over 22 pounds for old fogeys like me.
You see where this is going, right? If a young human being who was 22 kilos tried to land graciously and gracefully on Lake Hamilton, they would inevitably sink straight to the murky bottom. And if I at a nimble 69 kilos, tried to confidently stride onto Lake Hamilton then I would become embarrassed, humiliated and very wet.
So how come this magnificent creature can skim the water and rest comfortably on the surface of the water with all the ease of me settling into my easy chair, complete with fluffy slippers on my feet and a glass of something heart-warming in my hand?
I’m sure that a veterinary/zoology/physicist type person could explain it to me, but I would need a rather simple explanation with some stick figure diagrams and finger puppets, and even then, it's doubtful I would get it.
Perhaps it's better not to understand but to simply enjoy being enthralled by these precious opportunities. The transcendent moments where you find yourself asking, ‘What is really going on here?’