Friday, January 17, 2014

#1 Back of Beyond






My Favorite Nature Moments of 2013.


Some afternoons are perfect, far from the madding crowd, the corporate, urban, twittering madding crowd.

On a high country backroad, birding the back of beyond with those closest to you, those that mean something, a graveled way but just barely, that fades to dirt then only a deer path, forest that opens to a meandering mountaintop meadow after a spring rain with the clouds still scratching their bellies on the ridges. Still dripping. 

The mating songs of male wood warblers and vireos and grosbeaks just back from the tropics. Expectant. The hoodeds, the chestnut-sideds, the redstarts.  A paradise for birds. The Tennessee tropics.

A day in May. Fresh. Vernal. Verdant. Supple, still new and moist. The gala premier. When the new year is finally unfurled. It speaks! I'm green. I'm lush. I'm brash. I'm in your face. I'm alive, sensual, still dripping. Still wet, still sodden, still soaked to the skin with the amniotic fluid of spring. 

Newborn.

Yes, some afternoons are perfect.

More? Click: Birding the back of beyond in May.





No comments: