Navelgazer

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.

I 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.