How to: have hope

Least Tern scrape

American Oystercatcher caginess

Waiting to be found

Just as the sun steps over the horizon, head east. Drive with the sun in your eyes until you hit water. Do not think about yesterday's losses. Do not linger too long over what might've been. Do not wonder what you should have done differently.

Climb over the seawall and greet the Oystercatchers on their way to the river. Tip-toe through the wrack and nod towards the grumpy fishermen. Get down on your hands and knees to see what gifts the tide has left you. Do not mind the tears; the sand and the wind in your eyes are a good excuse.

See the Least Terns overhead: the brazen, bustling air-defense system of this beach. Let your eyes map their petite features: the quick wings, the black cap, the downward-pointing yellow bill. Count them by the dozens. Admire the simplicity of their nest: in a pebbly depression of dry sand, eggs 1 to 4, from pale greenish to dull drab, spotted with clear brown and some lavender.

Boardwalk reflections revisited

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin. 

  ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

Reflection is the beauty of a time remembered, a daydream captured in a flash of sunlight and sea sparkle. Two selves connect at the photographer's wrist on a cold October day by the sea.

I miss the boardwalk. I miss its opportunity for people-watching. I'd go there looking for things to photograph. I'd go there often to reflect and turn the world on end, to dive inside and peak beneath the ordinary world I faced everyday.

I gazed into windows searching for other dimensions. Through reflection, other worlds seemed to break free and be united. Nothing is as it seems in these photos. I love their dreaminess.

Photography is equal parts abstract art and truthful storytelling. Reflections provide creative control. Bending and twisting the world into something surreal and obscure, this tweaking of reality is incredibly freeing. And disorienting. And fun!

Reflection also grants a window into the mind. Like paint on canvas, there's a glimpse of a loved one abstracted, but true. We might catch each other in passing, yet hardly recognize one another. These images mark a place in time: the confusion of life turned upside down and inside out, but also an honest mirror into reality.

All pix from what feels like a lifetime ago in Asbury Park, NJ.

Our carnival life on the water

“Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America -- that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement... We never have the sense of home so much as when we feel that we are going there. It's only when we get there that our homelessness begins.” ― Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again 

Hurricane Sandy wrecked communities rich and poor in NJ, from the Staten Island-meets-Miami style multi-million dollar homes of Bayhead to the blue collar bayfront bungalows near where I grew up. Its images were unimaginable and unbearable to me: of trashed boardwalks pushed into the sea, of an iconic roller coaster dumped into the ocean, of a road leading into the tide where homes used to be. From a thousand miles away and desperate for news of what was happening at home, it looked as if my childhood had been washed away and that the entire Jersey Shore that I knew and loved was gone.

Eight months later, towards the beginning of last month, I went home to NJ for a couple days expecting to find a ruined way of life there, but also hoping, still, to catch a faint whiff of the competing aromas that signal "home"at the Jersey Shore: the fried dough of zeppoles just before the powdered sugar goes on, the sweet muck of a local salt marsh at low tide, the extra garlic on pizza slices and the salt spray coming off the ocean. All of these live deep in the soul of NJ for me. I found all of it, at once, and witnessed small moments in the sad seaside ritual of rebuilding the storm-damaged communities that I hold dear.

I can't pretend to be untouched by grief at the total destruction of the shore towns that are a backdrop to a thousand stories in my life. But the Jersey Shore is more than a place; it's more than its wood-plank promenades and town squares on stilts. It's more than its carnival lights. It's more than a staging ground for summer. For many, it's an identity and an attitude. I love the shore best on foggy days when you can't even see the boardwalk or the ocean, but can only smell it. I love the dampness and the feeling that you can almost lick the salt out of the air. I love the dampness in the sheets at night when you go to bed. You'd never put up with that anywhere else, but at the shore, it just feels right! When you walk around at night, you smell the boardwalk everywhere. There's always a far-off murmur of traffic. It feels safe. It feels comfortable. It feels like home. All of these things, thankfully, remain.

*Photo of where a house used to be in Union Beach, one of the hardest hit communities in NJ.

*Post title from "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" by Bruce Springsteen

Stones

Stone cairns that mark the trail up Arabia Mountain

I have piled stones
on top of one another
for years now
stones of habit
stones of comfort
stones of refuge
stones to settle my heart
stones to mark the days of my journey...

It's not uncommon to find stone cairns used as trail markers. These piles of stone help us find our way. They lead us somewhere and provide a tangible space to pause and recall. They offer a moment to get our bearings and seek direction. They hint for us to stop and listen for the whispering wind.

We may stand at a cairn and remember. We might dream or hope. Maybe we turn within to figure out the meaning behind this pile of stones. What does this place mean? What are its secrets? What are we meant to find here?

Rabbit intelligence

If a rabbit defined intelligence the way man does, then the most intelligent animal would be a rabbit, followed by the animal most willing to obey the commands of a rabbit. ~Robert Brault

The happiness that comes to us

Disgruntled beginning birders were the theme at Sandy Hook Bird Observatory today; my first volunteer day since, oh... June, I guess.

Sitting behind the desk in that drafty building on the bay, on any given Sunday, promises a variety of experiences. Many days we see no one, but oftentimes we have a mix of visitors, full of questions, but hesitant to spend any money to validate our presence there.

Today, Donna and I managed to sell exactly one "Butterflies of Sandy Hook" checklist.

(Exactly sixty-four cents with tax.)

A banner sales day!

; )

Donna, who's a librarian by day, is used to this sort of trading of information for the sake of visitorship. She recognizes our purpose there more readily than me, probably.

Me... I feel like I haven't earned my keep as a volunteer if I haven't sold at least one copy of the Sibley's guide...

The folks who came in today or called to complain... about the birds not being Here now... or the birds not being There yesterday, were expressing a frustration that I imagine many of us feel...

We want what we want from the natural world, when we want it.

If we show up... we expect Nature will be there waiting for us, with bells on.

Right?

I've spent the last couple weekends at Cape May or at the hawkwatch in Montclair... looking for hawks, waiting for them to show...

They never did, really, not in any spectacular way that I've come to expect. Instead there was a huge passing of Monarch butterflies at Cape May and Buckeyes in the hundreds of thousands...

And a Ruby-throated Hummingbird that amused me for hours while waiting for Broadwings to pass, near invisible, overhead...

Opportunities fly by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost, and the happiness that comes to us we heed not, because of the happiness that is gone.

~Jerome K. Jerome, The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, 1889

When I didn't know what hit me

I'm working on a different kind of list here in the last couple days before that birthday-which-must-not-be-named.

;-)

It's wanting to be a really long list and I'm having fun with making it. It's a list that commemorates the unexpected things that can happen over the course of a year, little moments that I never saw coming, things I had no idea I'd do in a run of 365 days...

I can't lie; it hasn't been the easiest year. There's been parts, in fact, that were so painful I can barely stand to speak of them.

But this is how you get over, I think: you make a list of the good.

So...

This year I:

watched an adult male harrier float over the red of an October cranberry bog

had dumplings in chinatown and alligator sausage in a cream sauce that's to die for

went to a major league baseball game. my first ever. on opening day.

(and the home team won!)

shared black raspberry ice-cream on the first day of summer

realized that I need someone who'll read poetry with me, or write it for me

;-)

spent an afternoon photographing a coworker's adorable babies

wished on a falling star in the mountains at Christmas

learned to like hugs from my big brothers

(well, almost.)

stood high above the New River bridge and then way down below it, again

hosted THE bird-blog carnival and survived

unknowingly started an airport postcard collection

had my hair blown wild as seaweed in a boat on Lake Superior

(and didn't puke!)

got hooked on lavender lemonade and yoga on the boardwalk

watched lots of spectacular sunsets

found the singular most beautiful orchid. period.

got my first ever parking ticket and had my first ever car accident (today!)

(the good in that isn't immediately obvious, but I'm hopeful)

learned to make an omelette and pump gas

finally got over some of my little-girl fears of swimming in the ocean

played poker for laundry money

learned what real heat and humidity feel like

found my 5th grade teacher on Facebook and she remembered me!

saw flamingos!

spent the better part of an afternoon lost on Rte. 3 and found myself at José Tejas

watched ravens weave invisible patterns with the wind

- - - - - - - - - - -

Hem your blessings with thankfulness so they don't unravel. ~Author Unknown

I've been blessed this year, for sure.

Side of the road

You wait in the car on the side of the road
Lemme go and stand awhile
I wanna know you're there, but I wanna be alone
If only for a minute or two
I wanna see what it feels like to be without you

I wanna know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind
If I stray away too far from you, don't go and try to find me
It doesn't mean I don't love you, it doesn't mean I won't come back and stay beside you

It only means I need a little time
To follow that unbroken line
To a place where the wild things grow
To a place where I used to always go

If only for a minute or two
I wanna see what it feels like to be without you
I wanna know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind.

A thousand miles there and back to spend a day with friends, old and new, gathered for the New River Birding and Nature Festival might seem crazy to some...

In fact, probably it was crazy to do, but the singing birds, the people, the chance to wander alone looking for wildflowers in those riotously rich West Virginia mountains ... it's all kinda irresistible to me.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Lyrics from "Side of the Road" by Lucinda Williams.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Photos:

(1) Windflower (Anemone sp.) Among my favorite wildflowers, Anemones are heartbreakingly beautiful and delicate

(2) Showy Orchis (Orchis spectabilis) I dragged Jim McCormac out in the near dark yesterday to show me where to find this beauty

(3) A giddy me photographing blooming May-Apples

(4) May Apple flower (Podophyllum peltatum) The parasol-like foliage of May-Apples is cool enough, but the flowers are especially lovely; more so cause you have to lie with your face in the dirt to photograph them where they hide beneath the leaves

;-)

(5) Fire Pink (Silene virginica) So named not because of their color, obviously, but because of the scissor-like notches on the petals... thanks Susan!

Fire Pink and silly me photos by MevetS.

A reminder

You're writing your story everyday; you just need to decide what happens next...

Wandering...

to a moonlit September beach

crab traps, fishing poles and the little compartments of a tackle box

to wildflower-strewn hillsides in W. Virginia

toasting marshmallows on a stick and waiting for the whippoorwills to call

to the smooth path of a wake behind the boat

night walks with Luka, the warm lights of other people's lives as we pass outside

to the first breath of salty air coming home over the bridge

the enchanted fairy-tale scent of beach plum in the dunes

to the places and people that don't change

the rumbling happy tone of your voice

to lingering can't-say-goodbye sunsets

the echoes of footsteps, no words between us

to winnowing snipe, pasture horses and more ticks than I've had on me in my life in N. Dakota

the stars and darkness gathered all around us, mixed with the sound of the ocean

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Where does your mind wander to?

Of owls and seeing

Pete Dunne tells the story (and I like to repeat it) that one must be pure of heart to see most owls. He was speaking specifically of a particular barn owl that was purported to roost in a hacking box at Brigantine Wildlife Refuge years ago. At the time, I suspected his tactic was common among field trip leaders; an excuse for failing to produce an owl for a group of disappointed birders after having stood around in the freezing cold for hours, waiting.

In the intervening years, since having waited many times in the freezing cold for my own fair share of owls, I've come to understand the truth in Pete's story. Owls are the stuff of imagination. Seeing these keepers of shadow requires exploring the edges of light... if one fails at it, the fault lies not in the seeing, but instead with one's way of looking.

I've been sort of surprised in the last couple years to discover that I'm having trouble spotting birds... my distance vision is deserting me to the point that before long I'll have to wear glasses when birding; glasses that I've stubbornly (and vainly) refused to wear anytime other than when I drive. I've become a dedicated listener instead: birdsongs I don't recognize or can't identify will drive me to distraction, but songs or calls help with only the easiest of owls.

Just as the omnipresence of noise makes it difficult to distinguish any one singer in the dawn chorus, the profane in a grove of pines can fill every nook and cranny of our time and space; the fertile silence that makes looking (and really seeing) is easily lost. When spotting owls, the looking is an art. Without true attention to it, an integral part of the reverence is destroyed... only the pure in heart are granted sight.

(Or you have a friend along who's better at it.)

I was distracted with the trees and the pellets and the scattered bits of bone and feathers, the place this little forest made around me; no two trees the same, every branch saying HERE. I couldn't stand still and let the trees (or the owls) find me.

It is the moon
not the finger
pointing at the moon
that calls us
back to ourselves

*Long-eared owl, regarding its own darkness in a well-known secret communal roost in Pa.

Relics

Left behind, survivors from another era, they inspire awe in me

and provide a foothold for my imagination

sweet sentiment dressed in snips and blazes and stars

a whimsical peek into the hubris of the past, red wattles swinging in a sultry breeze

admittance to some rich man's Valhalla, its roofless ruins pointing jagged brick fingers to the sky...

No longer one family's private garden, Cumberland Island is the type of place a child might dream of: a whispering forest where flowers grow giant-size and birds speak in tongues and vines are so fat they could carry you from a tree to a pony's wild silky back.

A place where clouds seem to have fallen to the sugar-white beach in foamy bits and scrub oaks lie blown back like shrieking women.

If ever you'd dreamed of such a place, you'd not have the heart to see it ruined again.

Silenced now are the grand parties, the silk and champagne laughter. Instead there's wild turkeys that waddle through the palmettos like a pack of tiny horses and ferns that sprout like fountains from the wet bark of primeval oaks, sudden pristine fields where cows might wander and the occasional lone palm that rises up like a warrior out of the whiteness. Suddenly, the crashing sea comes into view and the child in me is happy for dreams come true.

Your empty office

Dear Kathy,

I snuck away during your retirement tea this afternoon for one last look at your office. Already it was mostly empty of any trace of you, but for the umbrella on the desk.

I wonder if you did that; looked back on your way out the door. Or did you just walk, with a smile and your balloons and that silly plaque the county gave you, to do whatever it is you'll do now that you're not doing this anymore?

How does it feel to look back on thirty-five years, I wonder?

It goes that the best things said come last. I hope those words reached you today and that you leave knowing the respect and love we all have for you. That your example and your influence, by means of the mentoring you've provided for many of us professionally or personally, extended well beyond the confines of your sunny corner office.

In the span of years I've known you and worked for you, my perception of that office and of you has reshaped itself a number of times. I'm glad now to be far from those first nervous days when I was a trainee in your unit, seated in rows just outside your door like a schoolkid, under your watchful eye. To have come from that, to where I was invited in these last couple years with the door closed behind me, like a trusted friend, is possibly the greatest compliment you could ever pay me.

Thank you for that and for your confidence in me. Thank you for being there with Deb and Linda and Cathy M. to hold me up when my dad was dying and I didn't know how to manage it all. Thank you for quietly letting others help me when I needed help and couldn't get out of my own way. Thank you for encouraging my move to a promotion in social work without making me feel too guilty for leaving my *home* in Unit 425. Thank you for welcoming me into your office as a friend, even though you were my boss. Thank you for cheering me on, in this, now.

Your office is empty. I'm lingering at the door with a rush of words, too late.

A doorway into thanks

For terns and their fast wings
and the silvery fish that vanish beneath them.

For the little that I have
and less now, even, that you left me with.

For the oddly striped and sunblocked
and our ritual weekend-wash in the sea.

For my books
and your eye that didn't discern their value.

For this memoried vessel
and its wealth of beauty in bloom.

It draws my eye from what's been broken and dusted over;
a greasy black powder to name my fear.

For the comfort of neighbors
and the part of me, despite this, that wants to feel ok here.

For the perfect pink end to this day
and its voices that animate the darkest corners of my heart.

For your lack of any real malice
and the small brown bunny left in peace to be a witness.

For all the familiar things that mock me, unseen
and the Kingbird's solemn regard.

For having no one, really, to run to
and surviving, anyway, this first of disasters.

*This post was created on a Mac!... the only happy result of my laptop and most all of my camera gear being stolen early this week. I'm working my way through being angry... and trying to find that thankful place in my heart again.

Under a prairie sky

It seems to me nothing man has done or built on this land is an improvement over what was here before.

An example of one such place, land that hasn't ever been tilled for agriculture or improved in some way for development, lies halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee. A genuine tallgrass prairie, the Chiwaukee offers a delightful mix of native grasses, uncommon sedges and drop-dead gorgeous orchids among the many wildflowers that bloom within its swells and swales.

It's an excellent place to test your plant identification skills. I was fortunate to have a botanist and walking-encyclopedia along with me to identify plants. I'd point and Jim would spit out a Latin name. Kinda Pavlovian and fun.

;-)

I was tickled to spot this beauty first, after he walked right past it.

The Prairie White Fringed Orchid is a federally threatened species and like most orchids, rather mysterious in its growing habits... some years there's lots, others not so many. We found just two, I think, on the small portion of the Chiwaukee's 225 acres that we walked through.

Swaying back and forth among the grasses... delicate and exquisite... and tall at about three feet, it was easy for me to see why there are volunteers sufficiently enthralled with this particular orchid to stand in for their hawkmoth benefactors and pollinate them by hand, with toothpicks, at various sites within their range. So beautiful were they that I hardly saw any of the other wildflowers that surrounded them.

Pristine as it may be, the Chiwaukee and all its wonders are surrounded by houses and sprawl and represents just a small fragment of the native prairie that once existed in that part of the country.

It's hard for me to imagine anyone plowing these under to grow corn or soybeans or heaven-forbid-Walmarts, but that's not my reality. Far removed, I see only the interplay between an ancient prairie threatened by people, even as it's watched over and appreciated by others.

Without a map

Along the northern shore of Lake Michigan... a pic taken at a stop along the way to somewhere else... a chance to stretch our legs and see what there was to see.

I was struck by the familiar... the feel of the wind in my hair and dunes dotted with tansies. I filled the pockets of my jeans with tiny purple mussels cast ashore and wondered at a sea without salt and waves without a tide.

Explorers believed the world had an edge and they could fall off if they went wrong.

I think they were right.

This world is full of edges and falls. That horizon might be a new world or it could be a cliff.

Still, this is true.

I look around me and find the horizon is only a line drawn in the sky... a kind of dare.

For navigating... there's the fear map that directs me back to shore where it's safe and dry and comfortable. But following that map means going backwards. And backwards causes my heart to sink, really.

Always, there's the straight line, the *I know exactly where I mean to be* map. I keep thinking I can somehow convince myself of this, so long as I keep both hands on the wheel and don't let my hair become undone.

Mostly I've given up on that, lately. My record at trying to control the world ain't so great, plus it makes my shoulders hurt.

;-)

Instead I find myself wandering willy-nilly, easily distracted and with too much play in the steering wheel as I look at the sky... my heart and my head in their own happy argument... an argument that's sweetly wrong, but which pushes me into trouble at awkward times and which laughs me through disaster.

Who can deny it?

"Breathe," I keep telling myself. Feel. See. It seems simple, but is so very, very hard.

I keep forgetting.

The sea reminds me. This sea. The waves pound it at me, each a different ride, each a different possibility of diving or floating, of swimming or drifting.

The world insists itself like a lover. "Take me. Take this moment... this, now."

The flower salesman

I know the faces of most of the homeless in the town where I do my field work; many have sat across the desk from me at one time or another and others I just recognize from seeing them around town.

But I was caught by surprise with his flower-laden hands; the roses stolen, I'm nearly certain, from a streetside bush. "I love your hair!" he shouted at me as he crossed the street while I got in my car. Polite to a fault, I smiled and thanked him and closed the car door in his face.

Then I realized he meant to give me some of those flowers. Or so I thought.

;-)

Inwardly cursing my good manners, I rolled down the window and smiled some more and listened to his story. Because there's always at least one good long one. Something in my face brings out the storyteller in people.

Really, I think I must have *I'm a social worker. Tell me every last one of your troubles, please!" stamped across my forehead in ink that everyone but me can see.

Turns out he's a Vet that lives in a tent in the woods beyond Deal Lake in Asbury. Has a small army of children that eat up the majority of his VA pension with child support. His mind is still mostly somewhere in Vietnam, as he referred over and over to what his Captain says, as if that weren't forty-some years ago.

I'd guess it was about 10 minutes into our conversation, when he wanted money for the freely offered roses, that he regretted ever throwing a compliment my way.

Cast aside was the smiling white lady who might have money in exchange for a sad story. She was replaced by the social worker with suggestions for where he might find a place to stay for a while, a list of phone numbers and more unsolicited advice than he cared to listen to.

I left him finally with my business card, some change from the bucket I keep in the car for tolls and a bit of inside information that might just make some real difference in his life.

The application list for rental assistance opened in Asbury today. Only today. People wait for years on those lists, wait for decades for the list even to be open. Most people find out after the fact, when it's too late. Many of the people who need rental assistance never read a newspaper where the announcement and application are published.

I told him to take the money I'd *paid* him for the flowers and buy himself today's paper so he could submit the application right away and have it postmarked in time.

He thanked me and ambled away across the street, not realizing I was watching him from the intersection while I waited for the light to change. He crossed Main St. and went straight to the liquor store with my money in his pocket.

I'm hoping he bought today's paper and not a bottle.

Answers come, I suspect, in the form of angels sent to us unaware. So often we're upheld by giants of Kindness and Hope, by the kind of people who you pass on the street and feel sorry for because they are poor or uneducated or unable to speak much English. Together with the burden of all the sad stories I hear, I like to imagine the benefit of understanding and knowing deeply that true treasures wait here, that a certain kind of strength and confidence resides in the exact places and in the very people you’d least expect.

His rose, suspended in a small ceramic vase on the fridge, will remind me of that for the next couple days.

Dear snowdrops

Thank you for flagging me down to stop and appreciate you in the middle of my crazy whir of nervousness the other day.

Thank you for the invisible valentine of your downturned petals punctuated with a little green heart; I had to be on my knees in the muck to see that.

Thank you for the lady passing by who paused to tell me how beautiful you were - I was thinking about her amazing smile the rest of the day.

Thank you for sharing your private patch of sun-dappled shade with me.

Thank you for giving me the time beside you to remember that the universe will send me everything I need at just the right moment... a friend to hold my hand wordlessly as I wonder what's happening to me... another to talk me off ledges... someone to gather my stories and worries and unedited truth like so many ingredients of an ancient family soup... another to collect my tears when I most need to cry.

Thank you for helping me hear the stars in my dreams calling me.

Oh, and thank you for an excuse to muddy my jeans.

;-)

A first step

I'd intended to share pics of iceboats this weekend at the river or maybe to celebrate the snow that's been falling all day, but instead...

This story has been heavy on my mind and heart all day. The victim was nameless when the story first went to press this morning, but later in the day he was identified and I recognized a connection to one of my clients and before the workday ended I found myself meeting with a policeman to share next of kin information.

Sad.

I'm bothered by the things I left unsaid last week in my rant about the homeless. I spoke mostly from a place of frustration, rather than from that place in me that works everyday with the poor and that sees the things they really lack.

A job, a home, a purpose to their day... society can provide for those things in some form or another, but...

There's no way to counter the lack of a loving family to go home to or someone that smiles just to see you come in.

There's no way to replicate the feel of a warm-mittened hand in yours on the walk home from school.

There's no way to know what a kiss in the morning, coffee brewing and the newspaper waiting might do.

I'm not foolish enough to believe that love is the only answer. I know enough about the circumstances that lead people to find themselves in this situation. I understand about addiction and mental illness and the kinds of holes in a person's spirit that a job or a handout can't fill.

But we can try, can't we? To take better care of the people we love? To look out for our neighbor? To hand over a dollar or two for the man begging outside the coffee shop, without worrying that he'll use it, instead, to buy a bottle?

The need is overwhelming to those of us who stop to consider it, rather than just shutting down, or shutting it out entirely. It's easy to forget, I think, that the answer needn't be yes or no, all or nothing.

It's painful to see the need of others; even more painful to be helpless to fix it. Admitting to that is the first step, I think.

Hope, in feathers

There's a kind of rightness and predictability in bird behavior that is almost comforting to me.

Knowing to expect that every last hooded merganser will take flight to the farthest edges of the pond when I raise my lens confirms to me that I know one aspect of this species pretty well.

Waiting for the local pair of osprey to begin setting up housekeeping in mid-March or the woodcock to twitter and spiral through an early spring dusk or merlins to streak low through the dunes in late afternoon looking for a meal to keep them through a night's chill... all enhance my awareness of life's insistent rhythms and set a pace for my own schedule in harmony with a larger, more universal system.

There's also the realization that birds have important lessons to teach us; about being careful and its necessity for survival (hoodies are overly careful, I think) and about beauty and stirring the imagination (think of a flock of terns dropping from the sky into the summer blue bay or a scarlet tanager suspended in an oak) and also, they teach us about hope.

I found that hope looking me squarely in the eye a few weeks ago. Along an often-walked path through the local woods, I looked up a tree trunk one afternoon to find it looking back at me, in that magical way that owls have of appearing out of nothing. I'd stopped looking for screech owls along that path a couple years ago when their nesting box was vandalized, but this one had found a little hole in a nearby maple with which to frame his unblinking face. I think we both were somewhat shocked to be seeing one another, his face full of concentration at not being seen and mine one of pleasant surprise at learning that sometimes good birds are closer than we think.

What good birds have you found lately and what did they offer you?

;-)