Friday, April 11

noontime sit under the pine.

soft, dry ground to sit on. pine needle scent, soft green needles lifting and falling in the gentle breeze. robins and others singing their songs. boy looking, looking, looking silently, then wanting to nurse.

the grass and leaf piles look as flat as paper on the ground, having been pressed down so firmly by the snow. the perennial beds i mulched last fall show no mounds of plants beneath the brown leaves; everything is flattened.

the snow is only in patches here and there in the sunny parts of the yard, but it is still almost up to my knee in the deciduous forest out back.

saw a flash of a small reddish somebody fleeing through the back yard as a lumber truck pulled up next door. thought it might be the fox, but when i went out to look for tracks in the slushy snow, i found none. possibly a squirrel and an untrained eye, or else a clever fox who diligently steps only where all of the snow has melted.

such a quiet day, but for occasional cars & neighbors' voices. at the risk of sounding idealistic, it let me imagine a world in which all that there really is to hear on a spring day is the birds, the breezes, the silence between them. in which we walk across the land as we please - no roads, no narrow property lines. just oneself, one's people, and the land.

the only places i've come close to this feeling of cohesiveness is at parks and nature preserves, where everything is made to be available to all of us for sharing. but even there, i often develop a sense of "my" picnic or camping spot, to be defended against others wanting to settle.