A glimmer of blue. Tree bark. Sap coating the palm of my hands. The world spiraling upside down. Eyes fixated. Body raring for the landing.
The wind picks up and the trunk sways like a reed. I watch people below through a pine needle lens, clinging to twisted branches. Needles bow in royal imitations. I climb higher and higher still. Each jutting branch is a small beam to maneuver.
The back-walkover was one of the scariest skills to learn when I took gymnastics. The momentary spinning backwards through air- straight aiming in the dark. The slim balance beam floats off the ground, which looks hard and far away. My bare toes sweep the thin, tan beam. Hands and arms lift tall overhead. I swerve from imbalance to control. Check and act. My right foot extends as far as I can stretch in front of me. With eyes wide open I bend backwards, lifting both legs off the beam and for a few seconds, the world is upside down and my hands have nothing to hold but empty air and my pulse drumming fear and boldness.
Bronze sunshine floods the trees. I hold onto the branch and stare at the sky through a clearing. The branches beside me rustle, sending loose pine needles raining to the woodsy floor. The specific spell of solitude in the tree tower is cut by a blue flame and beating wings. In an uproar of color, a creature lands beside me.
I gasp.
The blue jay is larger than life. I stare at his figure, so close I could brush my fingers through the snow white feathers on his curved chest. He stuns me. Surprises me. Casts a trance. A rush of fear fills me momentarily.
THUD. The beam hits my bare hands. My fingers clench the narrow slice with grit. My nerves bend in half and follow my legs, still kicking the air, in a silent arch until I’m flipped right side up again, one leg touches down, then the other behind. I land, breathless, blood rushing to my blushed face, arms stretched to the sky.
The pilot peers at the rest of the world beside me and we share the view. I don’t share his natural way to take offs and landings but the cape of his wings inspire.
He strikes me as a Jay who does not get lost. The jagged edge of his sapphire wings unfurl. In one lone rush of force, he soars off the branch, fearless into the current like an ocean wave and leaves me on the beam in rapt attention.
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