The Sun is a Compass: What’s Around the Bend
In life, we’re always closer to the edge than we like to admit, never guaranteed of our next breath, never sure of what will follow this moment. — The Sun is a Compass
To be fully immersed in the journey is truly one of life’s great pleasures. So often we are thinking about our destination that we don’t realize all of the marvels that happen around us along the way. I don’t know what the secret is to true happiness, but I do know that I feel the most content when I’m moving along the path. We trick ourselves into thinking that the various points that make up individual destinations are outcomes and results.
But what if outcomes and results don’t actually exist? In the end, everything will disappear, everything will fade….our lives, everything we’ve built, all the time that we’ve spent here, the Earth itself will cease to exist. If we really sit and think deep and hard about these things, this realization could drive us insane. Either that, or it could push us into grasping onto the here and now even more so, immersing ourselves into the world we live.
The wonder that blooms around us along the way is happening each and every moment. We often just don’t have the power of observation within our daily lives to notice that what is happening, the world that is moving by holds countless miracles. The miracles lie in the fact that no moment is exactly like the next, or the previous one. Each and every moment is it’s own unique entity — a mini-universe of wonder that we’ve normalized as “time passing.”
December in Taipei, 2023.
Flocking cormorants leave Russia and Northern China in the winter to migrate to the warmer areas of Taiwan. I’m not a bird expert by any means, but if I’m aware enough to have my head up and glance towards the river during my morning cycling route, I’m usually fortunate to spot them as they pass me by in great numbers at this time of the year. On this morning, I notice them after I’ve crossed a bridge and rounded a bend overlooking the Keelung River 基隆河 on my way to work.
The gulp of cormorants are my companions during the month of December as they flock and rest in the middle of the river on their migratory paths, perhaps snacking along the way. Their speed is only slightly faster than my own, as I cycle along the river, a black mass of silent wings seeming to bounce in and out of the river in rhythm like the flickering tongue of an aquatic dragon. They join me during my commute, each beating wing seeming to be a salutation towards me, a captured moment in time.
How do they decide when to land upon the water’s surface and when to take to the skies? Where are they going? Who leads them?
I move alongside the gulp on the cycling trail and stop to watch their progress. One or two of them trail behind. I turn my head and see another group coming, the traditional “V” shaped pattern signaling their approach and relative speed, time passing with the seasons.
“I felt, more than ever before,” a kinship with birds in the springtime as they bid their time, waiting for the perfect moment to launch on a journey that will take them across continents or counties, over oceans and forests…There’s a word for this: Zugunruhe, a German noun made up of the two parts: zug, ‘to move,’ and unruhe, ‘anxiety’ or ‘restlessness.’ It means migratory restlessness, and is seen in caged birds prior to the onset of the migratory period.” The Sun is a Compass
The Sun is a Compass is a book recently selected by a reading club in my hometown of Lexington, Virginia. Although I have lived in Asia for almost two decades, with over six years in Taipei, Taiwan, I still maintain a strong connection with the small town where my parents and younger brother, Jonny, live. I try to make it back to Lexington at least once annually in order to spend time with family.
My mother and father both still live at home, but neither of them drive, and there are live-in caregivers who assist with medication, transportation, household chores, and other physical needs. My mother is quite active, swimming a mile 3–5 times a week, as well as joining community events and even taking occasional photo assignments for the local newspaper. She is engaging but impulsive, and I see shadows of my future personality in how she carries herself at times. My father, who is a retired professor of geology from Washington and Lee University and avid cycling fan, has been dealing with mobility and balance issues, as well as delusions where he has convinced himself he has committed a crime that has never happened. He has created a delusional doomsday scenario that plays itself out through a consistent rhythm in his mind, much like “caged birds prior to the onset of the migratory period. There’s no mistaking the signs. Wing fluttering. Sleepnessness. Disruption of normal activities” (The Sun is a Compass). Even when in our presence, amidst conversation about a seemingly innocuous subject, it’s easy to sense the turmoil within, the drumbeats of anxiety constantly pounding away at the cages of his aging mind.
Being so far away from home while my parents continue on the often rocky roads of the “Golden Years” during the aging process, I have aimed to maintain some sort of sustainable communication with both of them through weekly calls. It came to my attention that my father, who was much more mentally and physically active in his younger days, needed a push for mental and social stimulation. Often during our calls he would sit with his head resting on the table, or pace back and forth around the room, picking at whatever fruit was in the fridge, waiting for the authorities to knock at the door.
Recently, I found two book clubs that consistently meet in my hometown and decided that we would join both of them as a family, inviting my siblings to join in whatever way they could, distance be damned. I could not control who read what, but I could provide a proactive step forth towards literary and social adventure, as well as relaying the information to their caregivers and my siblings. In my mind, the book clubs would be our continuous project, with “The Sun is a Compass” playing the role of companion to our communication as the second book— a go to, a check-in point — a needle pointing us in one direction, at least for this tiny adventure.
We’re human. We’re vulnerable…There are a million accidents waiting to happen, future illnesses too terrible to imagine, the potential for the ordinary to turn tragic…And for this reason, every day counts. The Sun is a Compass
March in Taipei, 2024.
As I round the same bend on the Keelung River on the way to work, I hear my older brother’s voice reading aloud to me through my air pods. Bryan has customized the family project in his own way, taking it upon himself to voice record the entire book, one chapter at a time. I was back in Lexington during our annual visit when I received the first recording in February, the prologue of the book. At the time, I believed it to be a one-time thing, until I received Chapter 1, then 2, and so on.
Listening to my brother read “The Sun is a Compass” while being consistently in motion, commuting from point A to B along the river where the cormorants migrate and take respite is the perfect way for me to experience this book. The story tells the narrative of a young couple who takes it upon themselves to embark upon a 4,000 mile journey through the Alaskan wilderness and beyond. Prior to the journey, the author, Caroline Van Hemert was living a life where her passion for birds ended up trapping her in a seemingly endless loop of experimentation and lab-work…farther and farther from the Nature she yearned to understand. Inspired by the very own birds she was studying, she and her husband dropped everything to experience their own human-powered migration through the wilderness in a test of endurance, willpower, and testament of their own love for one another, Nature and connection to the human spirit. The physical hardships that the couple faces along the journey are paralleled by internal questions the author has that focus on what it means to be part of a family, society, as well as the balance that biologists must wrestle with as human beings.
One of the first tenets of biology is to let nature take its course. It’s also one of the hardest to obey.
Letting Nature “take its course” vs. taking some sense of ownership of the course that Nature takes are two entirely different paths. The author of “The Sun is a Compass” knows that Nature will have its way, but she wants to put her effort out in the open, one foot in front of another, step by step, stroke by stroke, in order to grasp hold of the journey that we are all on. She and her husband both show what it means to be curious beings and take learning and living to new heights through the adventure they complete together. I feel grateful for this book for letting me immerse myself in their journey, as well as my own — otherwise, we would all just be “passing time.”
No matter the distance or destination, we’re all joined by the most basic of human desires — to see what’s around the next bend. (The Sun is a Compass)
