It's the Tiny Things - The Brown Pelican
They dive like fallen stars ✨
Over the weekend, I took a trip a few hours south of Los Angeles to Oceanside. The Oceanside Pier is one of the longest wooden piers on the West Coast. The weekend was unseasonably warm – in the high 70s – the kind of weather that invites everyone to the beach.
As we were walking down the pier, we came across this guy:
He is a brown pelican. The locals named him Charlie.
He felt like someone’s pet bird. He sat, still and wise, and unmoved by close Encounters. It was his home, and we were visiting.
The fisherman put small pieces of fish on the railing for Charlie and the other smaller seabirds. They waited patiently for this token from the humans.
So many people walked this pier daily. Crowds gathered around him at times. He was not disturbed, but curious.
Over the railing, surfers paddled out to where the waves broke. Heads of sea lions popped up here and there – if you watched patiently.
All of these humans sharing the coastline with wild creatures. The trust between species, all co-existing in this beautiful place.
I think it is our nature to want to trust one another. To feel safe. To be curious about things different from us. To feel fascinated by how others live.
What a gift it was to get so close to him – to watch him, to see his feathers glow in the sunlight. I had never been close enough to a pelican to notice the red and gold woven into its feathers. He was pure magic. The kind of magic that inspired me to create something in his honor.
Until Next Time 🌙 ✨
Kim
P.S. Please leave a Tiny Thing below from your past week.
If you are also on Instagram, I’m co-hosting an art challenge beginning this Saturday. It is going to be a fun one - all about LOVE BIRDS. These are birds that mate for life - feathered soulmates ❤️❤️.
I invite people to share here in Substack as well. Post your art in notes and tag me! I will be sharing my creations there as well.
Challenges are amazing for creating art you never would have made, meeting other artists, and getting your work in front of people. I LOVE them.
I love everything about this! My tiny thing was a visit with my cousin. It was lovely, and he told me many facts about our grandmother that I had not known. Since I have “lost” both of my parents (my dad passed 4 years ago and my mom is in the late stages of Alzheimer’s)—it felt grounding and fortifying to talk and learn about my family.
My husband and I celebrated our adult daughter's birthday with a snowshoe outing. It had just snowed and the woods were pure white, the trees still laden with snow. It's the most peaceful place, the forest after a snowfall. It's a silence like no other. That's my Tiny Thing.