5:33 a.m. 59 degrees, wind E 6 mph, holds mosquitoes at bay. Sky: gray and overcast, rain imminent. Strawberries in fruit, blackberries in flower, redolent; milk-white petals light thickets, driveways, and roadside. Permanent streams narrow and shallow, murmur; outflow pipe from the pond, which directs water into the culvert, drips, a staggering countable procession of water, one drop at a time. Everything waits for rain; soon to arrive.
Blue jay flock, mostly fledglings, strafe a fledgling crow, which looks clumsy, acceding to demands; more hops than flies, moving tree to tree, branch to branch. wings arched downward like an umbrella. Crow pitifully caws. Blue jays circle and scream. A thousand feet above the wetland, three red-shouldered hawks, two chicks and a parent, circle and call. From their vantage point, they see the entire valley, the union of small watersheds, the long run of hills and ridges; to the north, they see the lake; and to the east, the big valley that binds us all.
On the pond, the mother merganser, crest tight, face honed to a point, and eight chicks move as one, bunched and vigilant, close to the security of the cattails. In the woods, male sapsucker drills his maple, a self-assignment that's lasted more than a month, a line of fresh, oozing holes just inside heartwood. Sugar maple, stripes and rings, sylvan Braille read by hungry, thirsty insects and birds; felt by the tree . . . enjoyed by me.
Chestnut-side warbler sings amid racemes of withered cherry blossoms; or, put another way, chestnut-side warbler sings amid racemes of developing fruit, a precious autumnal food for thrushes and catbirds. The black cherry, keeping pace with the approaching solstice, doesn't care whether or not I see its flowers as fading or fruiting. Chestnut-sided warbler, also unconcerned with semantics, sings his heart out. Outdoors wandering my home ground, bewitched by sunlight and clouds, drawn into the web of topophilia as deeply as when I played on the outer beaches of Long Island, the glass is almost always half-full, which is why quarantining has been more heartfelt than heartache, more joyous than tragic, more centering than scattering. To reacquaint with the little things that I had taken for granted and the bigger things that I had ceased to consider, the entire and ongoing saga . . . a collateral gift of being homebound.
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Thanks, again, for reaching out, Matt. Where is your home ground?