A morning with the peregrines.
The rain has passed and the curtain of clouds soared open, ushering in clear skies and the first frost of autumn. In the sharp light of a low sun the fog is lifting in waves of steam as the city wakes. Red and orange and yellow spotted trees speckle the cool gray city streets for their final days until they, too, succumb to the drabness of winter.
I’m downtown, within the towering confines of the tallest buildings, looking up. I catch the frantic flocks of pigeons lit alive by fear and wobbling maniacally. And then, a dash of a dipping peregrine that cuts across the sky into the shadows of a building. It is lean and long winged; likely a male from the size and skinny proportions. He passes between the shadows and emerges into the light, slashing through throngs of pigeons threading chaotic lines of fear. When I emerge from the darkness of the buildings, my eyes waver in the sudden brightness and I lose the peregrine in the sun. Like the anxious birds I whirl around to find that poetic flight of the peregrine, but he is gone to the sunlight. …
A morning in the woods.
Beneath a crisp and clouded sky, the earth is vibrating.
It all began with a brilliant sunrise of fiery orange that first licked the tips of the tallest pines with burning rays, like a shock of lightning, before it consumed the forest in a wildfire. Then the clouds rolled over the trees and settled in the valley, heavy and cold.
We’re deep into fall now and the sparrows are moving by the thousands through this etching of farms and forest. In the damp grass and dying shrubbery, birds are foraging frantically and flushing like fireworks as I near. White-throated sparrows whine their whistles and swamp sparrows shake on staggering cattails. They are only passing through, fleeing this cold front for warmer skies; if only they can dodge the great hurricanes that rage in the south. …
My time in a “big” city.
From afar, Boston stretches across the horizon. Like the chilly September air, its presence makes me shiver.
We drive into the edges of the metropolis and then burrow underneath, through tunnel after tunnel, until I am utterly disoriented. We emerge into the afternoon light, into utter chaos, into frantic energy. We’re surrounded by quaint brick apartments and glass towers and grating sirens.
I thought, until this very moment, that Providence was a city. And coming from the countryside, it sure feels like it. But no, I see now that it is a sleepy town compared to this place. …
I’m ten miles deep into a mountainous wilderness and I am precariously lost in my own mind. Far from any trail, any road, any sign of mankind — this is what I was looking for. But today, I’m seriously longing for home.
Somewhere in the vast and dense forests, my tent is encased in a meadow of snowberry and gooseberry, surrounded by great-green douglas fir and sparkling aspen. It is nearly silent in the suppressing midday sun. It should be, I suspect, wholly peaceful.
Yet, the quiet, comforting aloneness of the deep wood has morphed first into loneliness and then again into repressive solitary confinement. The tent, now some sort of sick torture chamber, is trapping the afternoon heat and my sweat is soaking my clothes. But I cannot leave this flimsy fabric dome for there are thousands, millions, billions of mosquitoes electrifying the air. …
A full moon at twilight is drowning in the city lights.
I feel the cool, humid autumn evening air on my face. My shift is finished, the cafe is closed. I’m sweating and biking and the wind is cooling the liquid on my face and chilling my tired body.
I step into bigger gears, riding down hill and pushing with the glory and passion of a man free from work. Free at last, freedom from the toils of service, relinquished from the pressing weight of responsibility! Let the wind take it all away…
Faster, I’m passing beneath fluorescent street lights that illuminate my form on the cracked pavement. As I pass each light my shadow over takes me on the left, a dark ghost racing faster, leaner, past me. When we return to the shadowlands, my dissected form morphs into the darkness in front of me until the next light, where it emerges again. …
Waves are falling upon the jagged shoreline in the clean afternoon sun. In their wake, a foaming sea folds back upon itself.
We’ve come here to see the swallows. Each fall, they gather here; by the hundreds, by the thousands. They become more prominent on this exposed peninsula than the ocean itself.
But walking across the jagged shoreline and thick brush, we find nothing of the raucous army of swallows.
It is empty here.
On searching for contentment in a new job.
I’m standing in the back of the cafe, learning how to slice bread for a catering order — or something ridiculous of the like — and suffering quite feebly in my head. It’s my second day at the new job. It feels, sometimes, a bit demeaning to sell wealthy folks their daily coffee. Especially when considering life’s pressing brevity and the possible beautiful pleasures that await us all. And so these thoughts weigh heavily on my will to be happy and grateful in this new opportunity.
So, I’m learning about the bread machine and the arrangement of pastries and all sorts knowledge that no human really needs to know unless they’re hoping to snatch that minimum wage paycheck. I think, what horrible knowledge to be seared into my brain. I’m not too happy about it, not happy at all, feeling a bit bratty even, you might say. But on the outside, I am smiling and nodding and listening because I need the money and I realize that my trainer is; peculiar to me, really enjoying her job. …
14 May, 2018
From the ridge above our camp, the cackling howls of coyotes echo under a drapery of deep clouds in the western twilight. The Black Hills rise around us and the smell of juniper hangs sweetly in the air. I imagine the coyote’s top-down view of our glowing tents as they clear the ridge. I fall asleep with their wildness in my heart.
Morning brings sounds I’ve never heard before. For the first time in many years, I wake naturally before the sun breaks. Lark sparrows, phoebes, and western meadowlarks sing from the twisted snags that claw at the sky like buried hands in the scree of the steep hillsides. The last poor-wills, birds of the night, call before passing the guard to my fellow diurnal creatures. …
What happens beneath the trees?
Through that iconic white picket fence, the grass is glowing; vibrant and lush and bustling with happy little people. A cobblestone walkway, lined with well-kept flowers, winds playfully through the lawn. From a freshly remodeled house, a sidewalk runs off an immaculate plastic deck to a freshly painted veranda with hanging baskets full of dangling flowers. Sculpted holly bushes and hedgerows of cedar act like sentries at the gates. Beautiful people wearing white with fanciful hats banter and laugh on a breezy summer day.
An old oak watches the hours pass beneath the sun.
The pale yellow and white paint is cracked and peeling from the boards of an old shed. An empty bird feeder; empty since forever ago, hangs off the corner and the door hangs awkwardly from its hinges. The shed is derelict, reflecting the collapsing house it stands behind. Bricks busted from the foundation, a rotten decks falls into the dirt. A garden from long ago grows high with weeds that hold down the thick, humid air and the wind carries the scent of lost memories. …
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