Living Through Them

Studiously avoiding a Father's Day post — or even a post Father's Day post — too painful this year — I turn my attention to the natural world, to the deck, where (truth be told) a chunk of my natural world experience occurs. (Hey, I can't be tramping through the woods all the time. A girl's gotta work!)

This morning, as I start my en plein air office day, I watch the birds flit from feeder to perch and back again. Hummingbirds zoom to their nectar founts and attack them with fencing-like maneuvers. A young chickadee lands on the railing and hops his way to the feeder. A male cardinal splashes in the bird bath then flits off to the azalea bush.

What I notice is the constant motion, from perch to trough and back again. What seems an impossible distance to me — up fifty feet to the dead bough of a towering oak — is but a few wing beats to these creatures. They make living look easy. It's good to live through them today.