Returning forward

Walter Kitundu

23 Nov 2025 — 1 min read

When thinking of a title for this space, a place of vulnerability and candor, of seeking and of remembrance, of experiments and testaments, I chose the name I used for many years to publish bird photos and their accompanying stories, Bird Light Wind.

It’s a comfortable framing, a set of familiar edges within which to weave and reflect. It’s a gentle place to receive surprises or challenges to my assumptions about the natural world. It’s a literary Patogh.

I hope you will honor me with your time and receive these words as an invitation to be in conversation.

I really am just sketching and learning on these pages which will be quite evident if you stick around.

More soon.

Prey Power

There is a widely held assumption that the power dynamic in a predator prey relationship is uni-directional. Predators are assumed to have power because they exercise it in clear and sometimes gruesome ways. I use the word gruesome for a human audience. A hawk might substitute the word practical, or

Granary

Long ago as settler colonialism crept west, and up the slopes of what would come to be known as the Sierra, unspeakable acts of violence occurred when those settlers came across people already living where the settlers wanted to live, or near where where they wanted to live, or where

family meeting

daytime ghosts nighttime wanderers stalking, digging, playing, asleep ears twitching toward the nearest footfall, closed door, or the swelling silence of an engine switched off some of us are the harms you navigate historical constellations, points of bad luck your movements ward off their evil spirits even as you reclaim

Meet the neighbors

What’s it like to be a pigeon living with Peregrines? I wonder if there are only older, healthier, and luckier pigeons downtown. Is that all we see? Do the young, sick, and unlucky eventually meet the talons of a falcon and have their feathers unceremoniously tossed to the wind.

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Prey Power

Granary

family meeting

Meet the neighbors