Life has a way of balancing everything, even the most moving of spiritual experiences.
Walking back after the sun has risen, uphill this time, we encounter a flock of tiny, busy birds. Rushing, tumbling in our path, as though they’re fleeing an unseen enemy.
Their bursts of squeaky chirps add to their ludicrous sense of alarm.
Grey-blue breasts and dark brown crowns. Brown bellies, white streaks in their wings, black faces. Fine speckling on their napes.
And above all, an unmistakable curling plume drooping forward like a jester’s cap.
These are California quails.
They scurry about in their covey, almost falling over each other in their hurry, not unlike a truck full of clowns in the circus, disgorging its contents.
Why are California quails in Cathedral Cove, we wonder. Are these a heretofore undiscovered species of Coromandel quails, long lost relatives to their American cousins?
We would later find out that these have been introduced to New Zealand in the late 1800s as game birds and since naturalised. They’ve done well; this is a good country to build a new life in.
Whatever their provenance, their antics are so absurd we take to calling them “clumsy birds” instead.
You ask me if they’re a flightless bird too, like the kiwi, kakapo or takahe. Just then one of the birds explodes into flight, a rapid flush before settling down again. There’s your answer, I say.
We laugh again, as we did down by the magical cove. It’s simply ridiculous. Yet we remain awestruck all the same.
And so it is with our days and months and years: sublime at times, absurd others, precious always.