I wish I could be more like the birds. When the world seems perverse and the news has nothing good to say, the birds still sing. For the last several mornings, sleeping with my windows open, the birds have awakened me early, chattering and chirping, singing and courting, sometimes arguing over whose turn it is at the feeder and announcing that it’s another day. The hummingbirds have arrived and are emptying the feeder every day, the goldfinches, brilliant in their yellow coats, play tag across the yard, and the bluebirds are busy at their home at the garden gate.
In the afternoons, I sit in the porch swing enjoying the aerial show and listening to their music. I’m not good at identifying their songs, other than the raucous crows and the loud cries of the mockingbirds, but you don’t have to identify the notes to enjoy the music. I have seen four hummingbirds at my feeder, and I hear them before I see them go by in a blur, the buzzing of their tiny wings sometimes right beside my head. I don’t know why hummingbird feeders are made with multiple holes – hummingbirds never learned to share and I’ve never seen two, much less four, feeding at the same time. They spend more time chasing each other away than they do eating. Maybe they are more like humans than we like to admit.
In the late evenings, I listen hopefully for a whippoorwill, once a common sound but in these days rare around here. Sometimes I hear a bobwhite across the pasture, calling hopefully for a companion. And sometimes the geese fly over, bound for the pond on the next farm or the river that circles the place where I live.
I try to avoid the news as much as possible, but some of the turmoil still creeps in, and I don’t want to be totally out of the loop. It just seems like people are getting more and more insane – they get upset about things that don’t really matter much and don’t care about the things that do matter. They talk about the “good old days,” not realizing that those days were not always so good for everyone. Sometimes I wonder, when filling up the bird feeders or trying to recycle my trash, why it even matters any more. Why bother to plant a tree that will probably just be cut down in twenty years? Why bother to rescue the turtle from the middle of the road? Why protest the destruction of our forests, or the carelessness with our water? Why work to preserve our farms, when it doesn’t seem like people care where their food comes from? People have never seemed so separated from the natural world as they are now.
I just returned last week from a trip to the mountains, where I was reminded of the healing power of looking out over a foggy river and driving through canopies of untouched forests. We visited a simple glass and wood chapel in a silent forest, built to help preserve the connection between people and nature and God. It was built as an invitation to people to stop and reflect, to meet the Creator in the quiet beauty. The brochure describes the chapel as a "thin place," where heaven and earth are close enough to touch. I felt it as soon as I walked in - even before I read the brochure. It was much the same feeling I get when I walk down to my wildflower garden and sit on my mossy rock with the dogs. That is also a thin place, and most of the time, my front porch is a thin place too. The connection is still there, if you are open to it. The disconnection did not happen overnight, or even over a decade or two. Wendell Berry wrote about it over fifty years ago, the need to heal man by reconnecting to the natural world and its order.
So, I recycle what I can of my trash, I fill the bird feeders, plant flowers that feed the bees and butterflies, try to dodge suicidal squirrels in the road, rescue frogs that fall into my water tanks, help turtles get safely across the road and write about the things I think are important, hoping to touch a heart or two. I sleep with the window open as long as the weather allows it. And the birds still sing.
