The Birds Still Sing

 

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.

 

The Journey

 

I went on a journey this morning.  Not a long journey; I barely left the city limits of Centerville.  But a journey nonetheless.

It started with a trip to the farmers market.  I had hopes of strawberries, hopes that were dashed when I arrived to find them sold out.  I bought cabbage, broccoli, and a freshly baked baguette, visited for a few minutes with a couple of vendors (remarking at length on the unexpected downpour we experienced last night), and went on my way.  As I started home, a longing hit me for a ham and biscuit from the market north of town.  It sometimes takes a lot to get me to cross the river, but the more I considered ham and biscuits, the urge overcame my reluctance. I turned up my radio, circled the square and set off.

I stopped for a newspaper on the way, bought a Dr. Pepper and eventually got my ham and biscuit.  As I left the drive-through, I decided to take the scenic route home.  With my window down and the radio playing my favorite outlaw country music, I set off down the winding back roads.  Someone was mowing his yard and the smell of fresh cut grass reminded me how glad I was that I got my front yard cut last night before the rain.  I also thought about the wide expanse of hayfield that had just been cut around my farm and hoped for sunshine today to quickly dry out the windrows.

I drove past the country club, where a group of kids was gathered out front, probably for instruction in the game of golf.  The greens stretched as far as I could see, dotted with early morning golfers enjoying the mild weather and sunshine.  I learned to play tennis at this country club, back in my junior high days when the club still featured a tennis court.

I made the turn onto Grinders Switch Road, a winding road through deep woods dotted with just a few houses and crossing the meandering railroad track several times.  This road used to be the only way from Centerville to pretty much anywhere east of town.  It led to Old Reynoldsburg Road and was the path a group of the Cherokee took on the Trail of Tears.  The sunlight through the trees cast dappled shadows on the road, and Queen Anne’s Lace bloomed at the edge of the woods. The breeze blew through my window while my music played in the background.  On impulse, I turned off onto a gravel road that led to an almost hidden waterfall, spilling noisily into a pool below. 

Ducks played at the edge of the road, and I envied the owners of this piece of paradise, surrounded by hilly woods.  From there I followed the banks of the Duck River, up a steep winding hill to Grinders Switch, one of the most famous of all fictional towns.

As I crossed the railroad tracks at Grinders Switch, a flock of turkeys caught my eye.  I stopped to watch, thinking to get a picture, but they meandered off the tracks into the woods before I could get out of the truck.  The tracks look sad and abandoned now, overgrown with weeds, and I think about the trains that used to run through these woods, taking passengers from Centerville to Dickson and on to Nashville. 

My great-great grandfather, Van Buren Shouse, took the train to Nashville for supplies he could not get in Centerville.  His journal lists what he bought on one such trip, material for dresses and shirts, a new saddle for one daughter, shoes for another and a #18 corset.  He did not specify who requested the corset.  My great grandfather Tom Colley shipped lumber along these tracks, and my great grandmother rode the train to the city for shopping, while her daughters attended the theaters downtown. 

Grinders Switch, originally called Griners Switch, after the Griner family who owned most of the land in that area, of course became Minnie Pearl’s fictional hometown.  I love the story about how that railroad stop came to be there.  When the railroad was being planned through the county, officials of the railroad visited Mrs. Griner to ask about getting a right of way through the property.  She listened to their pitch and said, “I’ll have to talk to my husband.”  When she left the room, the men must have been puzzled, because Mr. Griner had been dead for several years.  She returned, having communed in some way with him, and said that they would agree to the right of way with the stipulation that they would place a stop there to enable her to catch the train any time she wanted to.  So Grinders Switch came to be, with the misspelled name becoming the better known name.  One of the old signs with the original spelling, I believe, still sits along the railroad bed.

Once I was past Grinders Switch, I was practically home.  They were raking the hay as I passed the hayfield, using a hay tedder to fluff up the rows so the hay will dry.  Soon the smell of freshly baled hay will fill the air and monster sized bales will dot the landscape.  The sight of a field full of hay is music to a farmer’s eyes, only surpassed by the sight and smell of a barn filled with hay before a long winter.

I sat in the porch swing with my ham and biscuit and the weekly paper.  The dogs sat hopefully at my feet, convinced that I would share at least a crumb of biscuit.  The hummingbird was busy at the feeder and the woodpecker picked at a few peanuts left in the almost empty feeder.  I noticed with relief that the rose bush we cut down, believing it to be a lost cause, now has tiny branches with tiny pink blooms already appearing.  And just like that, the morning was almost gone, not one lick of work has been done, and it’s almost time for lunch.