Self-styled creative retreat to T and J’s Michigan farm. Floyd and I are just getting settled. We sit out on the screened porch glider, listening to spring peepers, night birds, and one lone, distant jet.
I have escaped Chicago.
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Sitting in the warm sunshine on the side door stoop, listening to the birds, I try to unwind this city self.
At the sound of a pickup out on the gravel road I jump up and holler for the dog, then realize he’s right there, sniffing happily at something in the grass just a few yards away.
IÂ go sit on the back porch glider, dog trailing, and watch chicken tv for awhile. Chicken tv is extremely relaxing.
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Things I forgot to bring:
- meds
- a belt
Things I have done so far:
- feed cats & dog
- collect eggs
- wash laundry and hang it out on the line in the sun
- set up creative work area
- set up digital work area
- email T&J
- text Chris
- drink coffee
- locate a crick in my neck
- train Floyd to stay close, come, leave Fern alone, leave Maisie alone, do not chase chickens
- shout and wave arms at three large circling birds of prey
- take many pictures
Birds I have seen:
- several breeds of chicken (cluck-cluck-clucking quietly to themselves as they peck around under the bird feeder then SQUAWK)
- red winged blackbirds (chuck-chuck-chuck or piercing cherroo– bullies at the feeder)
- something delicate and shiny black with an iridescent purple head
- something that looks like it’s wearing a tuxedo and a red ascot
- something smallish and grey with a black cap and white on its throat and cheeks
- sparrows with white racing stripes
- a woodpecker with a red head
Birds I have only heard:
- chickadee (chick-a-dee-dee-dee– which I hear in my mother’s singing voice)
- cardinal (cheer cheer cheer)
- crow (caw-caw-caw)
- something crying too-WHEET with a rising pitch
- something whistling whole notes round as a roll of lifesavers
- something going chur-chur-chur-chur-chur superfast
One of the neighbors is chainsawing for a long time. I imagine a big tree falling.
A chipmunk skitters by.
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For a moment I think I hear a crowd or distant loudspeaker voice, but then I realize it’s one of the gigantic hovercraft bumblebees hanging suspended in the evening spring air.
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It’s remarkable how sound carries out here; there’s been an unexpected backdrop of machine noise, loud against the pervasive quiet: field-plowing tractor, that buzz saw, what seems to be a motorcycle rally across the lake. And tonight from a new direction what sounds like someone inflating a gargantuan air mattress.
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Continuing the list:
- red squirrels chirring and chattering from overhead branches
- identified: brewer’s blackbird (shiny black/purple head)
- identified: yellow bellied sap sucker (woodpecker @ feeder)
- potful of red wigglers underneath the doormat
- wren trilling and burbling up and down the scale with madcap glee
- red winged blackbirds, clear and sharp back and forth between the bird feeder and treetops
- fat matronly hens chuckling to themselves
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At sunset the wind dies down and everything becomes quiet– all but a May-mad cardinal and the lumbering bumblebees. Spring peepers start up out in the marshy woods.
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Crosslegged in wildflower studded grass, photographing 360• snaps, buzz saw just audible over the empty field to the east, occasional far-off jet crossing hollowly overhead, twin-engine grumbling crosswise at lower altitude, here and there a vehicle shushing by on the road down the hill, call and repeat from treetops and brush– and it hits me how this place got its name.