|
Wednesday, August 11, 2004 Two days ago, standing out in the yard, hose in hand (the water hose, dirty minds), I felt a shadow pass over me, saw it glide away across the grass, its path taking a sweeping curve to the left. An enormous shadow, long and slightly crescent-shaped. It was one of those microseconds that tap into a primal part of the nervous system, the hair on the back of my neck prickling even as my brain understood the source of the shadow and tipped my head back to gaze up into the sky. About a hundred feet above the house, one of the largest red-tailed hawks I've ever seen circled slowly, its flight keeping it directly over my little hilltop fiefdom, not drifting gradually away across the countryside as often happens with that kind of slow, circling course. A line of fir trees and jumbo-sized lilac bushes off this end of the house acts as a windbreak, sheltering lots of wildlife, mostly songbirds. Lately, there have been an exceptionally high number of them hanging about. This hawk had gotten a bead on that, knew good hunting prospects when it saw them. Normally, a couple of sharp handclaps drive away unwanted winged interlopers (pigeons, sharp-shinned hawks, etc.), sounding enough like rifle shots to throw a scare into them. Not this time. This bird was a hunter, undisturbed by my feeble subterfuge. I glanced briefly away at one point, when I looked back, the hawk had drifted substantially upward, appearing half the size it had an instant before. A moment later, I looked briefly away again. When my gaze refocused where the hawk had been, I saw nothing but blue sky and white clouds, shafts of sunlight refracting through it all in dramatic display. Gone. Other sizeable birds have passed -- this morning a heron flew along the treetops, following the gravel road over the hill. No return visit from the humongo hawk, though. Northern Vermont has hit its lush, mid-August stride, critters everywhere, songbirds carrying on in all directions, the grass and bushes alive with singing insects, tree frogs occasionally adding to the general sweet tumult. All of it combining to produce a kind of music that affects me like little else, right up there with wind in trees or breaking surf. A kind of soundtrack I wait for all year, producing a sense of peace and satisfaction that's hard to describe. (Yes, I know I may be a weirdo, but there it is.) I tend to leave all the windows open, the stereo stays off. That's going to change, though. Two waves of visitors will be showing up in rapid succession, the first arriving Friday night, the second on Sunday or Monday. Everyone taking advantage of the high season. (What the hell. That's what guest rooms are for.) It's going to produce a whole different kind of soundtrack, especially when the second wave arrives with two exuberant little girls in tow. Entries here may be spotty during all the hubbub. Madrid, te echo de menos. rws 6:32 PM [+]
Comments:
Post a Comment
|