Waiting

Three months until the wood thrush song, two and a half, if I am lucky.

In the meantime there are robins, their distant cousins...hundreds of them
foraging in the soft soil beneath leaves, drinking from the open water of woodland streams, calling out their winter presence, perhaps keeping tabs on each others' whereabouts. 

There is the flicker, rustling high above in an old squirrels nest set in the fork of a tall tree, tossing old leaves this way and that, perhaps searching for morsels, perhaps rearranging the structure for its own purposes, certainly busy about something. And on the ground, from the vantage of a fallen log, a hermit thrush silently watching me watching the flicker, bright eyes fixed curiously upon the human standing in the middle of the road.

There are the white-throats, rummaging around in the leaf litter and the rush of wings just as I am getting a good look at them. And the male and female robin having what looks and sounds for all the world like a winter-weary irritated couple's spat, unmindful of me altogether.

Yesterday's light layer of snow has filled the cracks and crevices of fallen trunks and brings the forest floor into sharp relief. Lustrous holly leaves glisten in the sun and shelf fungi run up the skeletons of old trees, who appear indistinguishable from their living neighbors, except for this adornment.

Waiting...what was it Mr Rogers used to sing? "Let's think of something to do while we're waiting, while we're waiting, let's think of something to do."  What better than going out into the cold (even if only for a little while), breathing the frosty air, walking on frozen ground and listening to the crunch of feet on the grass and leaves, noticing the birds or the squirrels or the trees or the lacy patterns of ice crystals on standing stalks. 

Three months until the wood thrush song. In the meantime, I have a lot of living to do.