5:54 a.m. 51 degrees, wind E 0 mph. Sky: inside a cloud, colors and sound muted; visibility arrested; condensing, low-level rain, dripping leaves, a constant, soft splashing as the woodland waters itself. Permanent streams: upper, more a tremble than a flow, a shimmer of daylight, subdued reflections gently rippling around islands of polished rock; lower, puddles recalled, water retreat underground before culvert, damp earth on the west side of the road, a memory of flow. Wetlands: pastel colors in an encasement of fog, a gauzy curtain of moisture has closed off the far shore . . . and the season. Pond: sheds mist like a snake sheds skin, rolls back and peels away a westward expansion; a Lewis and Clark fog. Kingfisher rattles, in need of a pair of goggles to find minnows, in need of prayer to find crayfish.
Sounds of mid-August: holdout pewee; a crow; honking and hollering jays; sibilant chickadees pick caterpillars in aspen crown, their calls drizzle down. Hairy woodpecker calls; flicker drills.
A mixed flock of warblers in big-toothed aspen; bits of feathered energy darting here and there; reminds me of playing Hungry Hungry Hippos, seasonal electrons frantically and frenetically zip around the nucleus of the August. Warblers cloaked by leaves that don't know how to stay still, impossible to focus on. Peterson called them confusing for a reason; colors and patterns more drab than prominent; identity most improbable.
You do all the work—my neck aches.
Go to Jamacia, Cuba, Costa Rica. Go to Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Argentina. Be safe as you face tropical storms; cross the Gulf, the Andes, the Pampas, the Pantanal. Be safe as you make a mockery of borders I can no longer pass.