Every Good Morning

You Can Listen Here I could blame it on the dogs. Would I have known otherwise? On a familiar trail but far from others we cut through woods and deep brush to water. They stopped as if hearing a voice calling out a command. Ears up. Silent in the pulse of an exquisite alert. I often obey their lead when they show the way — always this way. If it had been deer, they […]

You Can Listen Here I like the sneaky-pete feeling of it, the mini-dash of the forbidden. I’ve been doing it for years. If I’m trying to be accurate, I don’t think I ever stopped once my curiosity bloomed at about 12. I wanted to see things that some official said were off limits. So….slip…So….slide…and gone into the forest. Based on what a ranger told me once about estimating the ages of local trees, the […]

You Can Listen Here The Rules are simple: Go out. Be still. Keep binoculars at hand. It began as a NOT flickering at the edge of my vision — as in Not-Squirrel, Not-Bird, Not Chipmunk. Rabbit? Rat? It skittered low across the stone wall — there, gone, pop-out, disappear, east end to west end and back. Furry tail, especially the end, very fast, sleek, torpedo shaped. Nothing chasing it. No other animal like it. […]

You Can Listen Here It is coming on full of itself now. A color wheel will not help with all the greens appearing from one day to the next — sassafras green, first bud green; barley, blue grass, cedar green. Cabbage butterflies and honeybees are foraging dandelions, mustard and clover, hyacinth and blue bells. Today, another bird returned, a tribe of tree swallows as iridescent as oiled steel — up from central Mexico and swirling in […]