5:35 a.m. 65 degrees, wind N 1 mph. Sky: clear; bright half-moon, mid-valley, lords it over the ground fog, which advances from the wetlands, a thick, narrow band that extends the dim-light of dawn throughout the pastures and adjacent woods. Permanent streams: upper, hushed, and inches forward; lower, gurgles downhill to the road, dies on the other side; a shrinking puddle, sans water striders, a visible end of the waterline. Wetlands: fog dissipates; a thin, hazy layer, middle-of-the-marsh that rolls uphill. Pond: surface, a sparse cauldron of methane bubbles; slowly rises, pops, and fades; bequeaths a run of subtle ripples that quickly flatten-out. Goldenrod blooms. And Joe-Pye-weed blooms. Blackberry ripens.
Woodcock flushes out of a damp gully, a maelstrom of flapping. A sapsucker whines, a pewee slurred whistle, sad song. A crow caws loudly, an agitated broadcast that renders all other birdsong mute by comparison. A nagging catbird reminds me of a dissatisfied toddler. A solitary red-eyed vireo, full-throated and persistent, prolongs the ebb of Neotropical song. Yellow-billed cuckoo, swallow-voiced and hungry, on hand for the horde of fall webworms, which swell on the leaves of lilac, cherry, apple, and black walnut. For the webworms: many leaves; limited protein; continually eating, continually growing. For the cuckoo: webworm bonanza.
Provident red squirrels remind me of my own winter chores. Mouth like shears, snip green pine cones, which splash through layers of maple leaves: cut and drop. A squirrel, cone in mouth, climbs down a pine trunk. Lots of chatter. Lots to harvest. Lots of storage . . . for me, one big seasonal alert. My own August program: order wood, plant more lettuce, prune maples around the barn. Overcome inertia.
Lisp of cedar waxwings. A bird I haven't seen in the valley all summer flies into a patch of blackberries. Eats ebony berries; leaves coral berries to ripen. I follow the waxwing's example—blackberries: the juicy, sweet taste of midsummer. In late June of 1978 (seems like yesterday), Linny and I rode bicycles around the Adirondacks. Up and down. Birded by ear. Songs seeping through helmets, revealing approximate elevations by the voices of various thrushes and warblers. Peddling, early one morning, we kept flushing cedar waxwings up from the uncut road shoulder. Curious about the birds' activity, we stopped—parted grasses, heavy with dew. The ground was speckled red, dense with wild strawberries, each no bigger than a pinkie nail. We ate until our fingers and lips were stained. Then, took a cup of berries back to camp and made delicious pancakes. All the while, indebted to waxwings . . . and a simpler life; before death had meaning.
A debt I'm reminded of this morning, as time unspools like a snake, strikes in ways I cannot fathom.