Every so often, I think of pulling up my modern version of tent stakes and lighting out for new territory.  What would I miss?  A house I seem incapable of heating for much of the year?  A summer that’s been rain, downpour, sheets of storm?  A road nearly impassable in mud season?  Black flies?  Maggots in the brassica roots?

Walking down to the mailbox today, I realized I would miss the pure, haunting melody of the hermit thrush, this tiny, unassuming brown bird.  The hermit thrush is a forest bird, not a bird feeder creature, and not inclined to appear in a suburban backyard.  For just a brief bit of the year, the forest around us sings with its loveliness, an auditory treasure.

… we drop everything to listen as a
hermit thrush distills its fragmentary,
hesitant, in the end

unbroken music.

– Amy Clampitt