5:28 a.m. (sunrise one minute earlier than yesterday). 46 degrees, wind S 0 mph. Sky: overcast, gray and misting, raindrops coalesce and sag from every twig, bud, and infant leaf. Permanent streams: upper, clear as gin, a concise flow; lower, background vocals for a male turkey gobbling and strutting in a woodland clearing. Pair of silent catbirds (FOY) forage in the leaf litter. Wetlands: three geese in the main thread flanked by new growth, breasts bright as the pledge of the new sun. Pond: sprinkles dimple the surface, shallow concentric circles expanding into oblivion. Yellowthroat singing in gnarled honeysuckle, head back bill quivering, lemon yellow breast, robber's mask (I cannot recall yellowthroats and ovenbirds arriving in The Hollow before either black and white or yellow-rumped warblers.)
Shadbush in flower, white petals limp like a partially open umbrella. Wan seedheads of coltsfoot look like bleached daisies. Purple trillium in bloom; five morels in the front yard, in the shade of a spreading pine, where I burn leaves and needles. Without the sun as impresario, birdsong limited to cardinal's slurred whistle, titmouse, chickadee, yellowthroat, and the slow and measured notes of blue-headed vireo (soon to be overwhelmed by motormouth red-eyed vireos), and ovenbirds, many, many ovenbirds. And a solitary improvising catbird, the Charlie Parker among songbirds—no two notes repeated in succession.
Sapsucker drills around maple branch, faint tapping, a ring of shallow, oozing holes. Future food for hungry warblers and hummingbirds.
Late or not, cool or warm . . . spring a triumph of green, soft and emergent green, multi-tinted green, a lifeline in a tattered world. Mourn or celebrate, a roller-coaster ride, the imperious demands of a rapidly evolving planet. Rachel Carson, 1952, The Sea Around Us. Devoted five pages to climate change. No one listened. No one saw the associated cost of melting glaciers and rising oceans, the northward march of ticks and tropical diseases, and income disparity. Homelessness. That's all some of us talk about now. Yellowthroat tilts his head back, pours out a song . . . he takes what Earth gives him. Win or lose.
Maybe I could just adopt a Yellow-throat song "Witchity-witchity-witchity" as a kind of personal mantra too? Or a Chestnut sided "Pleased pleased pleased to meet-CHA!" Or darling Yellow Warbler's "Sweet sweet sweeter than Sweet!" - Pollyanna-ish perhaps?
A VT birder at Wildbranch Writer's Workshop at Sterling College in Craftsbury Common once taught me the multi-syllabic Warbling Vireo song is rendered (in English) as: "If I see you, I will seize you. Then I'll squeeze you till you squirt." I blushed. She laughed.
Rachel Carson was one of the prophets for the planet; her SILENT SPRING led to the first Earth Day in 1970, the Clean Air Act in 1970 and the Clean Water Act in 1972. The documentary SILENT SPRING can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbLACDNJyN4
Like many prophets, Carson was excoriated and vilified by the same forces of greed that still attack environmental leaders.
Last year would have been the 50th anniversary of Earth Day; I'd planned to show the SILENT SPRING documentary to our retirement community and provide a handout connecting Carson to Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish activist who has inspired youth around the world. But COVID put an end to that plan and to so many others.
When I read your words, my heart wishes humans had found a way to live on the planet in such harmony with the natural rhythms. I just bought Bill McKibben's FALTER, which came out in 2019, 30 years after his THE END OF NATURE. If only we'd listen.