5:09 a.m. (sunrise two minutes earlier than Tuesday, June 22nd). 72 degrees, wind SSW 3 mph. Sky: mid-valley, the moon, a bulge more than half, oversees the rose-pink light of dawn. Scattered clouds grade to mauve, then brighten into overexposed white that thickens like meringue. Intermediate streams: clefts of mud. Permanent streams: upper, an audible version of a Blackburnian warbler song—high, thin, cheery—but desperately diminished flow; lower, puddled and silent, almost vacant. Wetlands: in the throes of drought; a shallow isle of fog, mid-marsh; red-shouldered hawk perched on the spire of a snag, veiled in mist, surrounded by green, thirsty reeds, flings voice into the morning—a verbal harpoon. Coyote songs flow down Robinson Hill, invigorating daybreak. Pond: brushstrokes of haze, the distrust of turtles, the mistrust of frogs; striders and whirligigs skate through a mosaic of pine needles; child’s rainbow-colored balloon, mid-pond, an island of unwelcome color floats on the surface, out of place as a video game on a camping trip.
AOR: along the edge of the driveway, two homeless kitchen chairs; crow on a mission wanders past the chairs, uphill and out of sight. Grit-picking robins, two. Aimless robins, three. One veery, dull pumpkin-colored, big eyes, black and moist. Mid-road. Flushes, then sings.
Two days from departure, two days left in the home, my boys fledged, and Linny died, and dogs and cats and hamsters loved in their time lie in unmarked graves. Memories undulate like waves, roll in at every turn. The veery's song, however, a moment of bliss, preempts my undisciplined mind. A one-bird duet, cascading notes. I pause, listen, draw up a half-hearted smile. Obedient, if oblivious, dogs sit, snapping flies, tongues lolling, wait, unknowingly, for their lives to be uprooted.
Mid-morning, June 22: the most prominent tree along the road's edge fell, a grandfather pine, crooked and imposing. Lower limbs weathered and busted like swords of surrender. Upper limbs, great sieves of green needles that filtered light. Tore down the woodland, ripped a half-moon crater in the surrounding canopy, daylighting hundreds of square feet of earth. At the edge of the hole, disorderly maples and aspens scarred, bark stipped or dangled, peeling off like the velvet of a deer's antler.
A deep, oblong cavity in the lower trunk, soaked by a thousand rainstorms, moldered while erect. Dark brown heartwood, punky and absorbent, rotted and spread until, behind the bark, living sapwood gave out. Then, finally and unceremoniously, the tree fell. Yet, a week later, the air is still redolent of pine.
Young crows cawing. Gravel-voiced tanager, high in aspen, keeps the company of ten thousand whispering leaves. Three young nuthatches, still in partial down, head up an oak trunk. Pileated flies by, wings flashing. In the front yard, grosbeaks and blue jays compete for ripening cherries.
My tenure at Coyote Hollow concludes. The baton handed to another family, whose own children will sit upstairs and watch storms cross the valley, lightning shards transcribing the marsh. As I cloister at home, plumbing the depth of memory, jettisoning unnecessary belongings, undone by the moment, the seams of wellbeing frayed but secure . . . finally, I face the next phase, continuing to color my life outside the lines.
I have loved this journey with you. Today's posting, ah....A most beautiful and fitting conclusion as one door closes and many others open.
You stopped the stillness of 16 months of existing in a pandemic with daily reports of sunrisings and nature's ever present awakenings. Now as you move on, may you be surrounded by new moments of 'ah ha!' and delight.