Spotted Towhee : Knowing Our Limits
Spotted Towhee
This is a Spotted Towhee. I saw him up in the mountains. They summer here after spending spring in Austin. This is a very, very smart bird…. This morning I had an opportunity to explore this trail more fully, and I followed it not to its end but to my end. Photographers assess trails differently than hikers or runners - or even birders. I had reached the base of the mountain range. The trees were all pines here, and their impenetrable foliage largely shuts out the light. The trail’s next stage was unquestionably magnificent, even inspiring, but the constraints of photography were incompatible with the environment. Continuing further was possible, but only if I became a “hiker” or “birder” rather than an Avian Rebbe. I backtracked to better conditions.
Our tradition, from Biblical to modern times, is filled with lessons that teach of proper limits. Adam and Eve are given access to everything ever made, except for one single carve-out. The Tower of Babel’s builders attempted to trespass into the heights of heaven. Talmud teaches that even study has limits. For example, prying overly deeply into the world’s beginnings is actually unhealthy and is explicitly prohibited. And even today, observant communities are surrounded by an “eruv,” a wire that defines a legal boundary so that people can walk and carry items on Shabbat within but not without. This is just a sampling of how relationships, eating, and work are cabined for the benefit of ourselves and the community.
Could I have kept going further down the trail? Certainly. Bears hadn’t been seen in three days…. But the shade and canopy, the dimmed light, would have meant that a different “I” would have been walking that trail. We tend to celebrate explorers and people who push beyond boundaries. That is certainly sometimes valid. So too, though, we recognize that in certain dimensions: ethics, relationships, our internal health, this pushing or exceeding boundaries devolves into transgressive action. Back in the abundant light, new birds flew in, and I received several more gorgeous photos. Stopping where I did - where the Towhee was - created rather than limited opportunities. So too with other boundaries we establish.