Bi-Weekly Topics for May 1, 2004
Summer Symphony
This has been a wonderful day of sun, a reprieve from weeks of spring drizzle, welcomed on the eve of the summer solstice. A cold front passed through and carried away the blue haze so that edges are vibrant-razor-sharp. The greenness soothes the eye today under an achingly blue sky. I had almost forgotten.
While the colors were remarkable, it was the sound of this day that made me take notice. Standing at the edge of the creek in the warm sun in the amphitheater of our valley, sound reverberated in layers, bottom to top-the creek rumbling below, a thousand incessant insects stridulating in the middle, while the northwest wind above played the ridges in the treble clef.
The creeks are risen and clear; much of the water enters the flow from underground. Recent rains have forced cold clear water from deep below the surface into the swollen stream-enough water to call it a torrent, and it is raucous, in a hurry. If you could stand at the shore of the ocean and record the sound of breakers, then take out pauses between waves-this is the sound that roars along the valley floor today. Breakers without a break, the bass undertones in this valley full of sound.
The seventeen-year cicadas relentlessly wax and wane their nasal love songs, although now and then the singing males all stop together at once, just for a moment. They preen circumspectly before getting back to their seductive songs. I'm certain they expect at any moment a lured lady locust will climb up to their singing perch and make arthropodic whoopie. It must be a most orgasmic event-to have waited seventeen years for this very moment. I wonder: if you listened closely, could you hear the instant of those little whoops when the next generation of earth-sleeping insects is conceived, followed by a satisfied sigh, just days before death?
On top of the ridges the wind becomes visible as a million leaves race just ahead of its force, like the standing wave that crowds perform in perfectly timed sequence at football games. Before me, a stadium filled with soft leaves. They rise in unison along the leading edge of the wind; they sit back down as it passes, only to stand and cheer again and again.
The cool air today is light, full of energy and ozone. It has come here all the way from the tundra, never breathed before, save by a few caribou, and fewer wolves. The sound of wind in summer treetops brings a multitude of boreal voices, a soft rushing whisper that lacks the shrill whine inflicted in December by this wind's winter relatives traveling over Nameless Creek though bare branches.
The Sounds of Rice Cove
The first time I saw Buck Cove Mountain in Rice Cove, it was a late afternoon in May of 1996. Rice Cove is in the Beaverdam Community near Canton, in Western North Carolina between Asheville and Maggie Valley.
Buck and I found a log to sit on. "I'm in love," I said. "Me, too," he replied. We sat there until dark, drinking in the view, and the sound: except for the soft soughing sound of wind moving around between valley and peak, there was an absence of sound somehow deeper than mere silence. Like a grandma's feather bed, we sank into it.
By September, that silence was broken by earth moving equipment. "You-uns is lucky," we were told by the driver. "No hard pan. We won't have to dynamite." Dynamite. My first real clue that a building project in the mountains was a world away from putting up a home in the flat land of Florida.
By next July, a 600 foot deep water well had been drilled, and we moved in.
The well went dry the next day.
Ah, we got smart, then, and employed the services of a dowser, otherwise known as a "water witch." Ironically, when he wasn't using "a forked rod believed to indicate the presence of water or minerals especially by dipping downward when held over a vein" (Webster's definition), this 83 year old gentleman preached in a hard shell Baptist church.
We lived with water from a truck and showers from a neighbor for several weeks until the new well was drilled.
At last, all the noise-making machines went away, and we were left alone in our sunrise sanctuary.
Mountain coves are level areas sheltered by a horseshoe of mountains. The level areas are used mainly for homes, gardens, to graze cattle and raise hay. The otherwise unusable, nearly vertical slopes are valuable as real estate to sell to crazy people from Florida who have lived on flat ground so long they feel like they are getting ground itch, or perhaps at retirement want to have a feeling of getting closer to heaven.
Everwhat, as our neighbors here might say, we were dazzled by the view of distant mountains, nearby valley, little steepled church and Mr. Best's cows in the pasture just below us.
The silence we "heard" while sitting on the log that first day evolved into a natural symphony. The ever-present doves provided an acoustic background "ooh" sound. At 7:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. each day, a distant man-made sound could be heard when the shift change whistle blew for the paper mill in the nearby town of Canton.
I shall never forget the first time, that summer, hearing a screech owl just outside our bedroom window. I still think it is one of the most hauntingly beautiful sounds in nature.
At this moment I am sitting in a room we started out calling the "sun porch." It has five sets of sliding glass doors and is adjacent to a partially covered deck; a perfect bird-watching spot, with regular and hummingbird feeders set up there. We soon changed the name of this porch to the "snow porch," because it is on the northeast side of the house and is very seldom sunlit. But to watch snow fall in this room is unforgettable. This morning I have seen and heard rose-breasted grosbeaks, Carolina wrens, tufted titmice, bluebirds, doves, and cardinals.
A bird sound we have eventually gotten accustomed to is the "Bam! Bam! Bam!" of a male cardinal -- we call him Red Rover. For at least the past four years, he has been a regular fixture, deliberately flying into the glass doors of the snow porch. He takes a position on a railing about 3 feet away from a door, and "Bam!" We have put out crepe paper streamers, fake owls, rubber snakes. . . . nothing works. For a brief time, two summers ago, he found a mate and was spotted tenderly feeding her choice bits from the feeder. But she left him. Perhaps a torrid affair with this excitable bird was fun. . . but the thought of a lifetime with a bird so controlled by his neuroses must have been too much for her.
The hummingbirds make miniature buzz saw sounds which can be disconcerting. I recall once eating a strawberry jam-covered waffle on the deck when a ruby-throated hummer decided he wanted it. Hovering inches away from my nose, tiny wings moving at warp speed, "Give me that! Give me that!" That was bad enough, but then another aggressive little fellow showed up and they began fighting, diminuitive beaks clicking. Seems ridiculous now, but it felt threatening at the time, and I retreated into the house.
Usually we had arrived from Pensacola each year, (about mid-April), by the time our neighbor had moved his cows into the pasture below us for the spring, summer and early fall. That was always a treat. We called it "Jurassic Park" because of the bodacious sounds made by these cows. I never once heard "Moo," but rather snorts and shrieks in all octaves.
Sometimes the little Methodist church in the valley would have its chimes turned on and set on a timer, so that about five in the afternoon the quavering bell sounds would float up to reach our ears, perfecting the day. Often, all doors and windows open, I played Chopin nocturnes on my ebony Yamaha studio piano, wondering now if music only floats upward or did it descend to those in the valley as well?
Occasionally, we could hear the straining motor sounds of the UPS truck, bringing books, music, or a new pair of hiking shorts to our door.
One of the more memorable sounds here has been the nearby hawk family teaching their juveniles. Papa and or mama scream with ferocity; baby hawk goes "eeeeeee!" They fly over the deck, waggling their wings at me. Marvelous.
Since that first summer in 1996, change has gradually begun to come to the cove. Two summers ago, a nice couple built a home halfway between ours and the main road. We are somewhat shielded from seeing their house in the leafy summertime, but from mid-fall through mid-spring, the pristine view is gone. People add people sounds, some more than others. Lawn is important to these folks, and so lawmower and chainsaw compete with a miniature Schnauzer and his beagle friend as new elements in the orchestra around here.
Returning last week to prepare for a move back to the flatlands, we learned that the 44 acre tract of land adjacent to our 14 acres has been sold. A travel trailer is there now, while the people who bought the land begin to eradicate all of the multiflora roses (considered a pest) and scrape the land clean to build a house and raise horses. Everyone needs a place to live, and it would be supremely arrogant of me to resent any alteration of this landscape which we ourselves altered in 1996, but in my heart it clearly resolves any ambivalence about whether our decision to sell and move is right for us.
This has been a magical time in my life. I have learned to hike mountains, ten to fifteen miles in a day -- what I call a four-peanut butter and jelly hike. I have learned to whitewater raft. And to love wildflowers, and to dream in the mountain mist. An abundance of gifts, sewn into the fabric of my being forever.
Knowing that there really is a time for every season is wisdom, and my heart now is moved most by the sound of the whippoorwill each night in the woods of Longleaf.
07:27 AM in Ecotone Biweekly Essays on Place | Permalink
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I completely understand how you feel. Over the years when our budget has allowed, we have been picking up pieces of land surrounding our homestead to create a buffer zone. This zone is now filled to the brim with turkey, grouse, owls, racoon, the occasional bobcat in addition to numerous birds, flora and fauna.
Posted by: Marie | May 2, 2004 04:44 PM
Somehow I think the whippoorwill, the owls, the hawks, the wildflowers, will miss your sounds and dreams in the mist in turn.
I'm reminded of the old Moody Blues song Tuesday Afternoon:
The trees are drawing me near,
I've got to found out why.
Those gentle voices I hear,
explain it all with a sigh.
I'm certain the trees are sighing seeing your departure.
Posted by: fletch | May 2, 2004 06:05 PM
What a world! This city girl can only imagine.
Posted by: Ana | May 2, 2004 07:57 PM
As people move in to develop homesites, habitat is lost one acre at a time. People need a place to live, but it's sad. And from the planetary perspective, tragic. But you are planting forests! Thanks for the lovely remembrance, and enjoy your new life. Glad to have you as "neighbors."
Posted by: Denny | May 3, 2004 09:05 AM
My Feathered Friend
By C. Little, no Less
I've been asked to post this story again, since my writing websiteTales From The Land of Entrapment has been down for awhile....
This is a tale from our former home of twenty years. Apparently the
new owners moved in and started pissing off everyone, not realizing
they now live in a hornet's nest--a family of warring neighbors that goes
back hundreds of years. The neighbors are not happy that the newcomers
are dealing out some of their own medicine - bulldozing, cutting down
trees, replacing beauty with rocks and gravel, noise and traffic -
just like they did all those years!
So it is with some nostalgia and no regrets I present this...
Tale from the Land of Entrapment:
(This is also a post for May 1 - Sound and Place on the collaborative weblog/wiki
for Writing About Place, Ecotone Wiki)
My Feathered Friend
In the '60s we protested for peace--now?--we'll settle for some peace and quiet.
Our home in Corrales may seem peaceful, yet with the whizzing traffic up front at the road and the barnyard cacophony in back, it is hardly ever quiet. A houseguest emerged from his slumber one morning with a puzzled look on his face, asking, "Is there a zoo around here?" The cows' mysterious mooing is like a cross between a rusty gate hinge and an elephant mating call.
Our second-story bedroom opens out onto a deck facing west towards the irrigation ditch and the rising escarpment. You can hear everything at once from up there?those cows, horses, burros, goats, sheep, yowling tomcats and howling coyotes, literally. Bullfrogs and crickets throb through summer nights occasionally pierced by the eerie feline cries of peahens. Church bells bong on Sunday morning, while hot-air balloons hiss and drift over the field, accompanied by a chorus of barking dogs.
Mornings we awaken, depending on the season, to honking geese, raucous crows, chortly finches and sparrows squabbling; the strange and wonderful sandhill cranes cruising by; woodpeckers working at the eaves, or comedic roadrunners chattering, challenging a watchful cat.
Sometimes I lie semi-awake in bed listening for my favorite bird, so small I?ve never seen her, yet she returns each spring with her distinctive song?a long story with a question mark at the end. She arrives with a big voice by the time the apricot trees burst into blossom, alive with an industry of bees.
Other days are less pleasant--rude awakenings to the sounds of my neighbor?s recreational bulldozing, incessant beeping front-end loaders and backhoes scraping, chainsaws, road construction and heavy equipment hitting it hard at 6 a.m.
continue reading at myfeatheredfriend.html 
Source: http://chickenlil.blogspot.com/2004/04/my-feathered-friend-ive-been-asked-to.html
The Sound of Here
By Feathers of Hope (Pica)
An entry for the Ecotone Wiki's joint post on Sound of Place
As Numenius pointed out, yesterday at 4:00 am I got up trying to locate a calling barred owl.
I am not normally walking about at that time of day. Scorpius was rising in the south and the air was still. No barred owl. Lowing cattle--polled herefords, mostly. I don't know why they do this some of the time and not others; it seems unrelated to when they get fed or the time of day. There it was, though: the drone of I-80. At four in the morning.
I write this at dusk and we just walked out and took more or less the same route. There were quite a few cars about, disturbing the frantic chattering of the Western kingbirds. But most of the other birds had stopped apart from a lone mockingbird--and a lone great-horned owl who was just waking up.
I yearn to hear all this sometime without human sound competing with it all, obliterating it. These days you have to go a long, long way to find that. Farther, I think, than the range of the Western kingbird.
Posted by Pica at May 1, 2004 08:36 PM | TrackBack
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Just come on down here (as you're about to do!) and tell me who these birds are who're always yelling their heads off. Them, the crickets, the very occasional car--that's all you'll hear! other than me, also twittering.
Posted by: Doc Rock at May 2, 2004 10:00 AM Source: http://www.magpienest.org/feathersofhope/archives/2004/05/01/the_sound_of_her.htmlConcrete, Steel and Stone
By ifyouseekay
From here, its not just highway noise, its individual vehicles, one by one, each sounds different than the last. That one was a semi for sure, that, a small car or truck, and oh yesthat was undeniably a motorcycle. There is another vehicle sound, much more distinctive, and much more annoying, but I dont hear it right now, so I wont mention it. It is frequent enough, however, that I will hear it before I am finished, and I will mention it as it approaches.
I signed the lease on this apartment before I moved to Missoula. I had seen pictures of the interior and I knew where it lay on the map. The highway noise, I was told, was not bad unless you were on the far south side of the building. I did not ask which side of the building I was going to be on. The deal was too good, a furnished 2 bedroom for 520 a month with a creek in the back yard and, beyond that, one of the finest natural parks in Missoula.
When I arrived, the slow rustling of the creek only meters from my back door was only occasionally drowned out by the throbbing of a motorcycle or frustrated hum of an 18 wheeler ripping its way through Montanas air. As you might expect, I am on the very south side of this building, and the noise of the highway is constant in its intermittence.
The stream, though, is intermittent in its constancy. Every night I am lulled to sleep by cars and trucks rolling over stained asphalt and water rolling over polished rocks. I was not awakened the first time the streams constancy proved intermittent, but, when I woke on December 29th, I noticed its absence.
It had slowed to a trickle as the temperature dropped, first, below freezing, and then below zero as Missoula sped into winter. On December 28th it still flowed in a winding crevasse between two ever growing sheets of ice. The next morning, if there was a flow, it was silenced by a thick sheet of ice that spread over the entire surface of the stream. I had heard it would happen, but I didnt quite believe it. I had never seen a frozen stream, I didnt understand how something so amazingly mobile could just suddenly halt in silence.
The highway noise continued, more intermittent than ever as more and more people stayed inside. Everything is dampened in the winter here. The sun hides, people stay inside, doors and windows are closed and covered, and the world loses color and is only white and gray. But the truckers keep on. They blow past much slower, but they still tear our air 24 hours a day.
And there it is. The sound I was telling you about earlier. It took longer than I thought it would, but it always comes. Each freight train screams its own chord. Some blast only one or two tones. Thos trains sound sick, like shadows of what they could be. But most have 3 or 4 full notes, always tuned differently. And each conductor has his or her own style. Toot toot tooooot. Hooooohoo hoooooo. Sometimes at night they sense our frustration and only let out tiny warning blasts to try and not wake us. But now it is only late afternoon here, so we are getting full blast. This one sounds higher pitched than usual, but its hard to tell without something to compare it to. One long blast, a long pause, another. It is silent.
But the rumble is worse than the hooting. The rails strain against the boards in the ground. The trains cars shake against their bindings as the wheels rattle and squeak. It is only just approaching. The rail road crossing guards begin to flash and ring as they lower. I can see the crossing from my bed where I type. The train is lazily flowing past the stopped traffic now. Three engines, so it will be long. Its a grain train. We have three sorts of trains here, grain, coal and lumber. Occasionally we will see something peculiar destined for who knows where. Train cars filled with sparkling new automobiles, sometimes the engines drag empty cars with their doors open so drifters can jump in at the stock yard.
Missoula has always been a way point for travelers. They stay over the winter sometimes, but in the summer their populations explode. Tents appear behind the brush in Greenough Park where a man will live for a day or a week, reminding me that the squeal and scream of a train is a mild inconvenience, and to some, it is a luxury.
But those men in the park have the creek to whisper in their ears just as I do and the train never wakes me up anymore. It might keep me up, if Im having a hard night already. But the highway, the stream and the train all have a slot in my subconscious now. I can ignore them as I choose and I never hear them unless I try to. Those sounds are just another subconscious sensation, like the rims of my glasses and the weight of my clothes on my shoulders.
The highway, the stream, the train. Each sound has a different intensity, a different consistency, a different connotation, but all of them together will always bring this place back to me when I hear them. I am leaving in less than a month. And so I am filing this in with all the sights and sounds and smells and memories of the other places I have lived. Each file calls a different weight to my brain. I will not know the weight of this place until I am gone from it.
I am giving this place over to my past, and I will never desire to live so close to a highway or rail line again. And while I happily rid myself of them with this move, I cannot and would not lose the weight of this place. That weight will always find me as I recall the sounds and smells and laughter and tears of the newest parts of my life. This places unique weight will settle in on me soon after I am gone in a moment of peace as I recall the sounds of my world flowing over concrete, steel, and stone.
Posted by: Hank on Saturday, May 01, 2004 - 11:41 PM
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20040513101048/http://www.ifyouseekay.org/
The Sound of Home
By Feathers of Hope (Numenius)
A note for the Ecotone Wiki topic on sound of place.
This morning there was a black-headed grosbeak singing in the yard from the treetops, and a Swainson's thrush singing from lower down. Both species are migrating through the Central Valley, and won't be here in the summertime. The song of the grosbeak is bright, cheery, and resonant. The Swainson's thrush has a beautiful flute-like song that cascades up through the octaves.
They remind me of home. There is a little canyon below the house where I grew up, just north of Berkeley. Both species nest in the canyon, and their songs would resonate through the canyon splendidly. I'd occasionally see the grosbeaks in nearby treetops, but the thrushes would always be singing from the bottom of the canyon, far out of sight.
Posted by Numenius at May 2, 2004 11:19 PM | TrackBack
Comments
I'll never forget the first time I saw a grosbeak. He was rose-breasted, and had staked a claim in a small tray of seed I had left on the deck here in the mountains of North Carolina. It began to snow. He settled into the middle of the tray until it was covered with snow. When I had to leave my observation post, he was still there. Now we have several permanent families of them right here. What a gift.
Posted by: Beth W. at May 3, 2004 04:36 AMI just discovered your blog from Ecotone. I love your posts about birds. Living in Florida, we have our own special bird population, and I often write about them under the categories of Florida Life and Florida Garden. I look forward to more visits!
Posted by: Denny at May 4, 2004 08:09 AM
Source: http://www.magpienest.org/feathersofhope/archives/2004/05/02/the_sound_of_hom.html
Hear and there
By Hoarded Ordinaries 
Yesterday morning I heard the year’s first house wren. We moved to Keene last July, and I can’t recall if I heard house wrens then, but I know that one of the biggest differences between our old and present houses was the change in birdsong. When we lived in Hillsboro, our house was nestled on the edge of Fox State Forest, so I was in summer-time surrounded by the songs of woodland birds: vireos, ovenbirds, black-throated blue and black-throated green warblers, several kinds of thrushes (veery, hermit, and wood), scarlet tanagers, and, in winter, an occasional barred owl. On spring evenings, we could hear peepers calling from the bog across the street, and on spring mornings, an obstreperous male sapsucker would hammer his brains against our useless old rooftop TV antenna, the sound of loudly resonant metal reverberating like machine-gun taps through the entire house.
Every year our house in Hillsboro sported its own pair of nesting phoebes. The overhang from our screened back porch provided a perfect nook for nesting, so each spring and summer we were heralded by the sound of phoebes–first the adult pair, then their fledged young–calling back and forth, their sharp, clipped calls nearly as emphatic as their incessantly bobbing tails. On warm summer Sundays, our meditation group would sometime sit on the porch meditating to the sounds of calling woodpeckers and warblers and those resilient phoebes. At first the adults would hang back, perching pertly on our garden fence, tails bobbing, considering if they could safely fly to and from their nest with so many people sitting nearby. Eventually, though, the pair realized we weren’t moving, or at least we weren’t moving toward their nest, so they flew to and from their hidden nestlings with bills crammed full of insects and grubs, the babies’ shrill, thin shrieking silenced only when their mouths were similarly full.
We have phoebes here in Keene, but we don’t seem to have any nesting right around our house. Instead, this morning as I write I hear the sound of blue jays and traffic, cars passing to and fro on their way to work. Last summer we caught the tail-end of the mockingbird’s breeding season: although I don’t know whether they had nested near our house, I do know that we had several fledglings hopping about the yard in late summer, their petulant clucks for their food-laden parents echoing through our back hallway and into the kitchen where the dog paced and whined. Mockingbirds, of course, are hugely vocal: although only the males sing during breeding, both members of a bonded pair will defend their feeding territory come fall. On warm summer nights some particularly ambitious males will sing loudly in the darkness, perched on the highest spot they can find (like, for instance, a useless old rooftop TV antenna).
Yesterday’s wrens were courting. The male was singing his boisterously bubbling song; the female was inching about coying, chattering and wisping shrilly from the tops of our backyard shed. The male was both singing and displaying, landing on some eminence like a pruned tree-limb, our neighbors’ parked trailer, or a free-standing basketball hoop and then deftly raising and quivering his wings in a move that is supposed to drive Lady Wren wild. Lady Wren, alas, was unimpressed: the true proof of any manly wren is the nest sites he provides, for Lady Wren is choosy and will pair only with a male who has prepared several sites for her consideration. Our yard, it seems, has no prominent nest holes, no nest boxes, no rotted tree cavities: today, that male wren and his coyly calling lady have apparently moved on in search of more promising real estate, leaving in their wake a sad silence interrupted only by the chirping of house sparrows and the clucking of robins.
This is my contribution to the Ecotone biweekly topic, Sound of Place.
Comments
Source: http://hoardedordinaries.wordpress.com/2004/05/03/hear-and-there/
Winding Down the Weathered Road
By Laughing Knees
Playing with the light around a cherry tree in bloom, Nogawa River, Tokyo, Japan, 2004 (It is well past the cherry blossom season, but I’ve only this weekend had any time to sit down and work on my spring photographs)
This is the 23rd installment of the ongoing place-based essay series at Ecotone. This week’s topic is Time and Place. Please feel free to drop by and read what others have written, and if you’d like, to contribute your own essay.
The white wagtail scurried ahead and stopped, to glance back at us, bobbing his tail and wheezing his shrill chirrup, urging us to “Hurry, hurry! Come, right this way! It’s just a little further! Hurry!” When our bicycles neared just enough to loom over him, the loaded panniers brushing the grass at the edge of the asphalt, he popped up into the air and darted further up ahead, to repeat his encouragements. For more than 2500 kilometers it seemed he led the way, the same wagtail, forever ahead of us, like the second hands of a clock.
That was the warmer half of 1995, the year my wife and I got married and decided to set off for a six month honeymoon by bicycle across the northern circle of Europe. We left our jobs, packed away all our belongings, drew wads of traveler’s checks from our bank accounts, rolled out our heavily laden bicycles, and flew over the expanse of Eurasia to Holland, where the wind waited for us outside the alleyways and canals of Amsterdam.
Neither of us had ever taken off 6 months to just follow our whims and the first few weeks tailed us with the worries of Tokyo, and the Bullet Train accuracy of speed timed to within seconds. That first day pushing the pedals beyond the sign for the city limits of Amsterdam felt like being flung out the door into the cold; the hardness of the road under our tires seems to present a vast horizontal wall beyond which we could not perceive. In a kind of reverse deadline panic we raced from town to town, urging each other to make the kilometers count, tallying up the numbers on our cycle computers, and feeling unsettled when, because we were still out of shape and exhausted from the wedding preparations, the average day’s distance added up to no more than 30 or 40 kilometers. We shouted at Holland’s seething winds, holding us back, and bickered when darkness fell too soon in the campsites. The weight of unenclosed hours and days, and when we paused to accept them, weeks and months, whispered for us to hurry, not waste any time, and make up for the guilt we felt from taking so much unproductive time off.
Under a stand of dark leaved chestnut trees on the western edge of Germany we threw our bicycles down and threatened to each return to Japan, alone. It seemed the trip would be over before it had even started.
On the road, cocking its black capped head, stood the wagtail, tsk-tsking. It left us to stand silently gazing out over a field of flowering yellow rapeweed, the heads billowing like waves in the breeze and the slow whale bellies of clouds overhead dragging their shadows across the rolling hills. We munched on bread rolls with gouda cheese, and in chewing calmed down enough to look at each other again.
“It hasn’t entered our heads yet, has it?” I offered.
“What hasn’t?”
“We’ve got six months. Six whole months! What are we hurrying for?”
“I don’t know. You’re the one in a hurry!”
That almost stoked the fire again, but I nodded. “You’re right. I don’t know what got into me.”
“Ever since we arrived you’ve been racing to finish the day. I can barely keep up.”
“I guess I don’t know how to get my mind around this. How do you plan for six months?”
My wife had a way with time. She always turned toward the sun and closed her eyes. “We’ve got six months. We can take our time.” A gust of wind brought the fragrance of some distant flowers. My wife inhaled deeply, smiling, and then opened her eyes again. “Didn’t we come here to look around? Isn’t that why we chose to go by bicycle?”
I sat silent a long time, just seeing the fields and the swallows swooping through the air. A damselfly alighted on my bicycle handlebar and slowly relaxed its wings. I felt something deflate inside myself, replaced by a quiet beating.
“I think I was scared,” I said.
“Of what?” inquired my wife.
“Of frayed ends.”
She looked at me with a frown, but said nothing. She brightened and picked up her bicycle. “First we have to get rid of a lot of this weight.”
Everything changed that day. The whole journey. We slowed down to the point where moving forward invoked less headwind and trees and passersby fell behind with less sharp reduction. We stopped when something nicked the corners of our eyes or the sky swung us into stillness under its great pendulum. The kilometers rolled by day after day, week after week, more as expressions of movement in the scrolling panorama than as signposts. Much of the journey hovered above the bicycle handlebars, each of us lost in long reveries during the spells between towns, and much of that time as partners in a silent traverse of newness, leaving unanswered questions in our wake.
Our perception of time and our participation in the revolving of the globe reflected in the mornings and evenings, when we woke with the calling of the hooded crows, jackdaws, and robins, and with the first light filtering through the walls of the tent, and when we retired to books held up in the coolness of the evening air and the stirring of hedgehogs and shrews in the bushes, before turning out our lights and sleeping with the whole night wheeling through our minds. At times we happened upon a place that so merged the inner stories we bore with its character of wonder that we lingered for a week or more, tasting the place to its very fruits and vegetables and getting to know its hoary old inhabitants. The bicycles moulted into wings that flew between rest stops for our eyes and feet. We became like the wagtail, landing somewhere to root around among its rocks then flitting a few pedal strokes to the next sunny vantage point.
By the time we reached the Shetland Islands and the Orkneys our muscles took us without protest to where we pointed our front wheels, the rhythm one with our bicycles. Our breathing seemed to exhale from the soil, and we headed on and beyond in all weathers, thoroughly entranced by the light of the sky. We walked for hours, sometimes alone, and returned to the tent with sprigs of flowers or seashells that we handed to each other as if they replaced the money that we used now only for food and occasional transportation. At the campsites other long term travelers joined us over hissing camp stoves to converse and relate tales until deep in the night. Our time and their times brushed together like passing veils, always with the light glimmering through.
We had ceased to exist wholly in the modern world.
So when it came time to return to Japan and back to jobs and four walls and alarm clocks, we floundered along the highways and took every opportunity to escape them. The last days of the journey wound down in the copper light of late autumn, among the wet country hills of Northumberland, England, and the gray tangle of backroads in Belgian town outskirts. Neither of us could find words to protect the dream we had just woken from. Six months had passed and it all seemed like a single instant, like shaking loose summer leaves from a tree.
Japan crashed into our ears, cut into our eyes. We slept for two months with the apartment windows thrown wide open, welcoming the bite of winter air, feeling our breath stoppered in our chests, our muscles aching for resistance. And gradually, insidiously, the clocks ticked louder and the television screen held our gazes longer, and that lone figure tramping along the sandy lanes retreating further and further down the road.
It’s been nine years. My beard has sprouted white hair. The bicycles stand furled in the kitchen by the window. Days pass when the sun creeps past the curtain. Sometimes I wake at dawn, after a evening laboring at some other person’s dream and falling into dreamless sleep, and hear the wagtail calling. He bobs his tail, like a finger beckoning. “Hurry! Hurry! No time to lose. It’s out here where the heart beats like thunder.” Like a storm moving across an endless field, and the road leading straight into the dark, gathering clouds.
Posted by butuki at 10:09 PM in Nature and Place | Permalink CommentsThat was beautiful!
Posted by dave at May 17, 2004 04:12 AMThat is a great story.
Posted by Denny at May 17, 2004 05:30 AMI admire your courage, and your prose. Have you been following Cassandra’s posts?
Posted by P. at May 17, 2004 11:49 AMTaking time out, slowing down - then going back and having to pick up speed again. the price of creating freedoms for oneself. Sometimes I wonder if it really would be easier never to stray from the path. Years ago a coleague I was close to left the profession we were in to retrain and kept telling me to jump. I didn’t but carried on while also going to art school. I’d like to have that kind of time out. But I also worry it would do my head in coming back.
Posted by Coup de Vent at May 18, 2004 06:43 AMA beautiful piece that leaves me with a deep sense of yearning for those dreams I’ve turned away.
Posted by Penny at May 18, 2004 08:38 AMBeautiful writing……..
Posted by Dottie at May 19, 2004 10:22 AMYes, beautiful writing. And that photo of the cherry blossoms against the white sky is stunning! I thought it was snow until I enlarged it and looked closer.
Posted by leslee at May 20, 2004 11:41 AMBeautiful. Thank you for sharing…
Posted by Thomas Sturm at May 20, 2004 04:16 PM
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20040517013026/http://www.butuki.com/archives/2004_05.html
Sounds Of Place
By O'DonnellWeb
I haven’t contributed to Ecotone in a few months. I blame this all on Fred. He hasn’t been writing Ecotones either, and the only time I ever think about it is when he posts his first.
This week’s subject is Sounds of Place. As is my habit, I write these based on the first thought that comes to mind. I read “sounds of place”, and I immediately thought “military jet aircraft.”
I’m an Air Force brat. The sound of an USAF fighter plane streaking low overhead is about the most comforting sound I can imagine. This must relate back to growing up on USAF bases where the sound was just part of the everyday fabric of life. A few specific remembrances that come to mind…
Playing baseball in the field at the end of our block on Grissom AFB, IN and hearing the “crack” as jets broke the sound barrier overhead. This was 1976ish so I’m going to guess they were F-101’s? Another specific instance in 1997, we are on Shell Island just across the bay from Tyndall AFB. F-16’s start practicing touch and go takeoffs on the runway not more than a mile or so across the water, and they roar directly over our heads at very low altitude. It was a parade of jets, so loud the ground shook, so low you could almost feel the exhaust. I was enthralled, as was my then 3 year old son. I also remember running to the window in our condo every time I heard a jet that whole week.
That sound just makes me happy. I can’t really explain it any other way.
Our current home sits directly between the Quantico Marine Base and Fort AP Hill. We don’t get many jets, but the low flying squadrons of military helicopters are a suitable substitute. And yes, I race to the window or out on the deck for a look anytime I hear them coming. My son is usually already there.
Comments
- on 06 May 2004 at 12:02 am Stephanie
Air Force brat here, too, and that sound has the same effect on me. It’s comforting.
- on 06 May 2004 at 6:08 pm P
My wife tells a similar story of living in NCO quarters on a SAC base, Offutt, as a child. Directly across from the family apartment was the ready line, where bombers were lined up with their engines running 24/7 all the while she lived there.
I grew up with a sense of imminent apocalypse as a child in the quiet Catskills. I shudder to think what I would have thought had I lived there — but then, maybe if I were an Air Force brat, my perspective would have been entirely different.
- on 09 May 2004 at 6:03 am fredf
The training F16’s that flash over Goose Creek followed momentarily by their gut-thudding sounds are not so comforting in this setting. Last week one hit a flock of birds and crashed (both pilots ejected) over the county to the south– about fifty air miles and 20 seconds away from here.
Source: http://www.odonnellweb.com/?p=995
Speaking out
By P
I hear voices.
No, not those voices -- the ones from the other side of your head, or God or whoever -- they never say anything but "Hey, bum! Mow the lawn!" and "If you weren't a slob you would have put the laundry away by now!" Those voices must have a direct line to my mother, and I don't pay much attention to them.
The voices I hear are much rarer. They are the ordinary voices of adults chatting in the street out front.
Now, if you don't live in suburban America, you might not have noticed the phenomenon. There's plenty of noise here, but never the sound of talk. Over the hiss of the wind in the pine tree and the rumble of the washer's spin cycle, there's a lawnmower out there somewhere, chewing up leaves and small branches by the sound of it. Now and again, a small plane passes overhead. The sparrows are chattering about some midday prodigy; a starling disagrees. A dog barks: Woof!, pause, Woof! -- happy enough to hear its own echo, I guess.
Somewhere in this green and insulated neighborhood, mothers are talking to their kids. Somewhere, kids are talking to each other, but I can't hear them. Somewhere people are washing dishes and talking on the phone, I suppose, and everywhere, the damn tube is talking, but that's not the same thing. It's extraordinary to hear adult conversations outdoors, and I have to control the urge to rush to a window and find out what they're talking about.
Oh. It was my neighbor's maid service, packing their buckets and saying goodbye to their customer.
Maybe this is why people hang out in bars, for the chatter. With so much to talk about, you'd think we Americans would be blathering nonstop, on buses and in elevators, to grocery clerks and mailmen and over the back fence to our neighbors, for heaven's sake. Polite people don't do that, and it embarrasses others when they do. I shocked the heck out of some folks on an elevator last month by asking the woman closest to the buttons which two floors were missing from the panel.
Feet shuffled. Eyes, hitherto glued to the readout over the door, met and glanced away. Folks edged away from me, one of those idiot conventionnaires -- drunk, probably (quite dry, in fact); dangerous, possibly. A thousand miles from home, I just didn't care. I debated whether to leave them counting and told them, as I stepped off, that the missing floors were 13 and 5. Give 'em something to think about as they ride the rest of the way up. Why 5?
I wondered what would have happened if I had muttered something about foreign policy. Likely they would have decided that I, not the president, was insane, and phoned Security about the deranged person on the sixth floor.
The sound of voices brings a lump to my throat. Now and again you hear it. Outside the pool or the ballgame, it means something's going on, and I feel impelled to go be a part of it.
May 3, 2004 at 10:31 am
They’re back! Enjoyed your bird news.
May 6, 2004 at 12:05 pm
Denny, the house wrens haven’t been back in our yard since that first day, but I’ve heard them elsewhere. And the other day I heard the first catbird of the season, and today I thought I might have heard the first Carolina wren…
So yes, they’re definitely back!