Climbing the forested foothills above Kathmandu amongst the different varieties of pines, some rhododendrons, planted raspberries and even kiwi fruit, walking a ridgeline, it’s easy to hear and sometimes find with the eyes a whole range of different birds—from black kites circling high above, eight together some days, swallows darting through the canopy, small birds with white eyes, tiny birds they call tits, grey-headed warblers, long-tailed minivets bright as glowing coals in the nighttime fires, small birds with yellow breasts, blackbirds, crows, other long-tailed friends—all out with the morning sun, singing, darting, sitting on branches above the ridge, diving down the other side, belonging, it seems, to the outing of the sun. And then maybe you’ll see bees smaller and larger, black and yellow on raspberry and other flowers. And maybe on the ground, on tiny white flowers there’ll be a butterfly orange or white, or even one I saw a bluey grey, fluttering quickly to finally slowly alight on flower, folding up the outerside of its now brown wings, disappearing almost, leaflike, only to fly on in a small blue cloud again. Or maybe there’ll be a tiny ladybug red and black on large green leaf, or even folding up its wings after landing on the dusty clay soil. All of them much harder to find on cloudy, colder days. But on this, sunny warm day of early spring, they seem to have been called up and out—seem to have risen from the dark and the cold and the shadows…with the morning sun. 

Beings of higher places, it seems, alighting on all the trees and plants which wait for their arrival, tethered as they are to Earth.