Morning Song

the spring garden is in full swing

This is the moment each day when belief surfaces and I am most aware of my own soul—on the porch in the predawn, where I sit, watch, listen, and wait. At first only the maples in the front yard are visible in the dimmest light. Each limb droops, tired it seems from heavy rains, reminiscent just for the moment of conifers in the narrow winding valleys along the Oregon and Washington coast, wet, bedraggled, ancient, and possibly sentient.

Then the inevitable rooster crows, broadening my awareness to the sound of dripping beyond. An inch of steady spring rain has fallen overnight, and the leafed-out trees and the grass growing thick on the ground provide a slow release for the fallen water. The bird song makes its first presence heard as lonely soloists begin to call out in the woods and orchards. Whether their plaintive voices rise in search of lost others or offer some personal meditation on the nature of life and grubs, I do not know. But the light is changing fast. The bulk of the big hay barn with wisteria twining up its southern side emerges from the gray fog. In front of it the wethers and the new ram lamb appear creamy white ghosts in the gloom.

The dawn has more fully arrived, and the trees are awash with sound, the soloists having stepped back and joined the chorus. The air is thick with music from all directions. I don’t make an effort to distinguish the cardinal from the field sparrow, nor the mockingbird from the bluebird. There are dozens of species who make a home on our farm at different times of the year. On this morning they all have partnered in a joy-filled choral display of chirps, whistles, trills, twitters, squawks, and clicks—together leaving me dazzled and gently moved at their bringing an ordered beauty out of this potential cacophony.

Minutes later, down on the highway, there sounds an early discordant note from a logging truck that winds its way first past Johnson Valley and then Cook’s Mill, the farm, Possum Hollow, and finally Ross Road, competing to be heard before its low rumble fades away. The birds sing on with their melody of creation, and the light reveals more trees farther down the drive.

I sit with my coffee, as I have so many mornings on this same porch for the past quarter-century, and try not to think but simply take pleasure in being part of this small world. Then, like in a gradual awakening in bed when you wonder if it is time to get up, the material mind stirs. I shake the dream away and begin to review what needs to be done on the farm. A few minutes later a fox barks its weird cry, and I think I should both count chickens and get my shotgun. The connection is broken. Now it is only me, while the sounds out on the highway grow as more of my disconnected kind do what they do, voicing their own mechanical chorus, unlovely, unwanted, into this, another new day.

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Reading: The Leopard (G. di Lampedusa), Gone to Texas (F. Carter), and Angels in the Cellar, notes from a French vineyard (P. Hahn).

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My book, Kayaking with Lambs, notes from an East Tennessee farmer, is on sale. The prices fluctuate, but currently the paperback can be had for $13.60. And the hardback for $16.60. Available at Amazon (sadly). Still, it is a heck of a deal.