5:17 a.m. 49 degrees, wind WNW 2 mph. Sky: a moveable feast of color and shape; unevenly overcast and layered with blushes of pink in the east, congested and less colorful in the west; eastern sky morphs to cotton-balls and gauze, which slide past a half-moon; fractures and separates as time goes on. Dawn without mist. On the pond: duck trail through a veneer of pollen. No sign of duck, which shelters in the wetlands. Lone green frog twangs; needs tuning.
Proclamations: Nashville warbler loud and clear; black-throated blue not as loud, not as clear; ovenbird, yellowthroat, red-eyed video, swamp sparrow. Shameless chestnut-sided warbler sings in front of me; I can almost touch him; an altogether beautiful bird—yellow crown; black mask and mustache; white throat, chest, and belly; chestnut sides; wings and back streaked black and white. A veery, volume turned down, spins a subtle version of his song, soft and distant but still grand. Robin, possibly the very same one I watched yesterday, searches the road; finds another smashed June bug . . . swallows and blinks.
Every morning's walk is deliciously different, each a line in an endless manuscript multi-authored by clouds, trees, streams, mammals, amphibians, turtles, and birds. Edited by the seasons and by trends, some surreptitious, some blatant, some unknown. A story influenced by time beyond reckoning. Snakes make cameo appearances, solemn as prophets, unspooling on the fringe. Insects may hijack a plotline, of which there are many . . . for a spell. Narrative threads, like cloudscapes, unstable, ever-evolving. Things too small to describe may have already composed the ending. Every valley is an ongoing tale. I see such a very small part of my valley's improbable and dependable details; and, as unique as fingerprints, no two people could ever read this day or this valley (or any other valley) quite the same. What makes this manuscript worthwhile, what tethers me to these walks, besides the fact I'm part of the story, is the predictability of change. An inexhaustible commodity. The only constant in a constantly unpredictable world.
On the road: A piece of luna moth wing, pink and pale green, like heaven and Earth.