The Hummingbird

She found it at the bottom of her sock drawer. Old cough drops, a pencil, smiles paralyzed in a photograph. Awkward almost-adults hanging on each other while holding up a trophy.

It was a birding award from the National Audubon Society. A gold hummingbird sitting perched atop a wooden base with a plaque that read "Winner of the 1938 hunt for the Amazonian Bomber." Under that it has the latin name; Patagonas Gigas. Linda cringed. The audacity it takes to name a magnificent bird, without considering what those who lived with it from antiquity have always called it, she thought.

Linda recognized her parents. She’d heard a few stories about their trip to the Andes mountains to see the largest living hummingbirds. They buzz through the forest at amazing speeds, then suddenly stop in mid air to take notice of something. 

Linda plops into her TV chair and leans back. Picking up the controller, she turns on CNN. She grimaces at the orange-faced man pursing his lips to form a perfect asshole on his face. She didn't know how to process the news anymore. Once there was a deep calming drone that was the voice of a newscaster reporting on the world today. 

Now she double checks her mood before she watches. Lately she even started taking her blood pressure first. Definitely not like the days when she’d get just a little heat flush watching as Walter Cronkite made his somber, serious nightly delivery. News felt safer when it came out of his mouth. Linda longed for a world that made more sense. One that felt less scary.  

Climate change, dragging, too hot days stringing together, volcanoes erupting under the oceans, shark attacks in Texas. PFAS forever chemicals that permeate our soils, food and air. Red states and blue states. “Geeeez,” she sighs. “Whatever happened to One Nation Under God?”

Linda flicked off the TV and pulled the photograph out of her back jeans pocket. She picked her phone up off the little side table and called her brother. “Hey Lindy.” She smiled. “Hey Tommy.” She loved how his voice had invisibly slid from a high pitched sometimes whining sound, into this confident almost baritone. 

“We need to go to the Andes Mountains of South America. Mom and Dad made a big discovery there.” She explained. “Before us. When they were just kids.”

 “They have a trophy, but I’m confused. I’m not understanding why they got a trophy for a discovery, when the bird has been there all along. Surely the folks who live there knew about it. Certainly they gave it a name. On the trophy it says they named it the South American Bomber.”

“That sounds like something Dad would have come up with, yeah?” Tommy responded. “My point exactly. Why isn’t the name that was given to it by the people who live there on the trophy? This is about their legacy, Tommy. We can’t have them looking like white usurpers who come around looking for something special, then claim they discovered it, yeah? We have to fix this!”

Linda contacted the National Audubon Society, still going since 1905. The board president agreed that if the bird they named does actually have a long-used  local name, they would make an acknowledgment publicly. He looked up the records, and gave them the name of a village in the area of the so-called “discovery.” 

Tommy arranged their flights. Within the week they were on a plane heading for South America. From the plane window Linda thought the Andes looked like she felt. Ancient. 

She began to wonder how many adventures she and Tommy shared. She used to joke about being the only baby in a womb with a view. His big head was just impossible to miss. His big head is the reason mom would get grumpy. Just imagine trying to push that out a hole the size of a rubber ball. She quit those mean teases after Mom died.

Looking down over the landscape Linda could see gray-white streaks topping the brown sloping mountains. Rivulets create gullies that look like long hair falling down from a sharp long angular point. Impossibly blue lakes splattered randomly in the valleys. 

High in the Andes mountains lies lake Titicaca. One of the largest in South America, it plays an important role in the spiritual lives of the local Incan people. They circle, then land in Juliaca Airport.

From the airport Tommy and Linda head to the Belmond Andean Explorer, a train that takes them to the lake. Once there, Tommy navigated them to the hotel where he already booked them each a room at the Sonesta Posadas del Inca Lake.

They settle in. The two decide to explore their surroundings.

“Look, look, look!” Linda pulls on Tommy’s arm, dragging him to the edge of the lake. His eyes follow her pointing finger. There, hovering just above the water, is a fluorescent green hummingbird dipping its long beak into the water for a drink. 

A short, round woman slowly approaches the two. “Buenas dias,” she said.

“Gracias,” Linda responds, “Y la misma para ti.” (and the same to you)

Wearing a white frock with a colorful floral embroidery along the yolk-like neck, the woman stopped a few feet from the water, not far from where Linda had been pointing.

“Los colibríes son muy especiales para nuestra gente.” (hummingbirds are very special to our people) “Y por que es eso?” (and why is that?) Linda enquired.

“Weeeeelll,” she begins. An ochre glow on the horizon illuminates her copper skin. Like a brass plate held up to the sun, her round face has an eminence from behind. 

“Lake Titicaca is the highest lake in the world. She is a major source of drinking water for all the people around here. And as you can see before you, the Uro people still live on their floating island homes.” Her extended hand waved slowly, her fingers slightly parted. In the distance are homes on bundled reeds, rocking gently with the water. It seemed as though she were sending a small waft of air in their direction.

The woman continued; “In peruvian shamanic traditions, the royal hummingbird is known as Siwar Q’enti. This is in the Quechua language of our people, the Inca. Our most important archetypal creature, it flies in any direction; up, down, backward, forward, as well as hovering in one place.” The woman went on with her story. 

“Siwar Q’enti is known to accompany shamans into the three worlds, upper, middle and lower.  They also guide souls  into the afterlife. When a shaman opens a ceremony Siwar Q’ienti is summoned from the north. The shaman would say; “whisper to us in the winds, teach us to drink deeply from the nectar of life.”  Some suggest it was the hummingbird that guided our people here, to lake Titicaca. Others say we have always been here, the children of Pachamama.”  

She cast her eyes to the ground, eyeing her companion who trotted up just minutes into her story. The Geoffroy's wildcat is a local creature often adopted by residents. The cat purred while pressing his thick gray fur against her bare leg. 

“What a beautiful story!” Linda emoted suddenly. “How kind of you to share with us” she said in Spanish. 

The little woman decided to continue. “It started with pollution. At first it was just run-off from farmland and big herds of animals. Then some industries moved in with their dirty cloud emissions they try to hide by only releasing them at night. And of course the tourists kept coming, leaving behind garbage and discarded things no one wanted to carry home. Sometimes the people get greedy, too, and overfish. 

After a while, we all began to notice a drop in water volume - due to climate change. We do ceremonies to try to balance things. They say if someone is drowning, to leave them. That way we can give a life-offering to Pachamama, our Great Earth Mother.” 

By now Tommy’s jaw is hanging open while he listens. His eyes dance with rapt attention.  Every now and then he notices the click click and singing, ringing of hummingbird chatter. More birds join their green water-sipping friend. One of them hangs in a mosquito cloud near the reeds, sipping in his dinner.

 Descriptions of hummingbird flocks are whimsical. A bouquet, a glittering, a hover, a shimmer or a tune. Tommy likes that one the best. A tune. He thought to himself. Yeah. They are like colorful notes that fly, inspiring the wind to sing. 

Suddenly his attention rivets back to the story. Her voice was like a warm tree pitch, dripping slowly down its trunk. “Las palabras fueron creadas para compartir las imágenes que llevamos en nuestros corazones…”  Words were created to share the pictures we carry in our hearts.

Linda stared at her. Her fingertips lightly brushed her back pocket where the photo lives. “Siwar Q’enti” she whispered. Linda caught Tommie's eyes. They stared silently -  a moment paralyzed in time. Simultaneously the two whispered “Siwar Q’enti.”

Just as she turned to leave, the beatific friendly messenger said “You must go to the sacred valley. The Ensifera Hummingbird Gardens are there. You will be able to see every kind of translucent jewel our nation offers.”

They tore away from their gaze to say thank you, but no one was there.

They gazed along the lakeshore, and back the way they had come. No one. Not even a fluffy gray cat.

The two elderly travelers packed up the next day. On the itinerary is, of course, the Ensifera Hummingbird Gardens.

Sitting on a bench in the Garden, Linda heard a big BBBMMMbbbbmmmmm buzzing, so loud she looked in the direction of the sound. Headed right towards her was the biggest hummingbird she had ever seen. Patagonas Gigas. 

She slugged Tommie in the arm. “Look!” She demands. “That must be why Dad called it the Bomber, yeah? Because it actually sounds like one, yeah?” Her squeal of delight was contagious, Tommie chortles right along.

On the plane ride home Linda fingers her picture. Smiles paralyzed in time, she thought. She brushes her gray hair away from her eyes. Tommy leans his seat back, and picks up Linda’s hand. He leans in towards her ear. 

“So, tell me…when you first realized you needed to find out what the original, local name of an Andean Hummingbird is, why didn’t you just Google it, yeah?”