June 16: Fields of gold

Field of buttercups--
for this I slowed my car,
calmed my racing thoughts.

November 12: Blue birds, bleak sky

The other night I dreamt I saw three bluebirds together on a branch. Then I saw them in real life.

Yesterday I indulged in birding for the entire day, moving around the Midcoast to some of my favorite spots. I started off by spending several hours on Beech Hill, hiking all the trails, scanning fields and woods along the way. But the highlight of that outing was at the very beginning, when I was walking alongside the first, lower blueberry field. It was mown recently, and that seemed to have attracted a flock of bluebirds. The strikingly bright birds were foraging in the field, perching in trees in small clusters together along its edge, and even singing. On a bleak November morning with a frost-white sky, posed on leafless branches and amid sere, cropped blueberry plants, the bluebirds were easily the most vivid aspects of the landscape. I watched them for a long time, and when I finally looked away and continued on up the hill, I could hear their songs echoing behind me.

Even more beautiful
than birds in a dream--
bluebirds on bleak barrens.

August 19: Hay fields

I've spent many summer weeks of my life here at Bread Loaf in the heart of the Green Mountains of Vermont, as a Middlebury undergrad (this is Midd's "mountain campus"), at the School of English graduate program, and at the Writers Conference, most of them when I was in my twenties. The sun shines brightly this morning on the vast mown lawns and the uncut hay fields that surround the campus, and I can't help but lose myself in reverie over the many memorable experiences I've enjoyed in these fields. Like riding with about ten other people crammed into an old Mercedes in the middle of the night "on safari," randomly driving through the tall grass while blasting weird music. Or clowning on the "Robert Frost Rock" in the middle of one field, a rock where he'd once been photographed. Or sweet summer kisses. Or long walks picking wildflowers with my best friend. Or watching bluebird fledglings forage in the weeds...

Amid timothy,
uncut goldenrod, reside
fields of memories.

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August 13: Summer afternoon

I'm standing on the edge of lawn and field looking up at the green slopes of Ragged Mountain. At the lawn's edge, blooming gladioli stand at glorious attention, and faces of tiger lilies peer through greenery. Hummingbirds chatter and buzz around the flower beds. Goldfinches rise and dip over the fields, singing non-stop, swarming the seed feeders. Overhead, birch trees against a blue sky. Butterflies flit in little circles around me, and in the distance, a family of bluebirds gathers on a branch. Tomorrow night we're having a party here, and at this moment, I can't imagine a more perfect place to be.

Butterflies, bluebirds,
birdsong--is this a set for
a Disney movie?

June 8: Wet Field

This morning I led a small group on a bird walk on the Head of Tide Preserve in Belfast. The pathway through the old farm fields was supposed to have been mowed, but it's been so wet that our Stewardship Director wasn't able to get to it till this afternoon. So we waded through some very wet waist-high grass in the day's early hours, carefully listening and watching for birds, and seeing more than a few trampled patches where deer must have lain the night before. By the time we left, my jeans were entirely soaked through, but when you're really focused on what you're doing, that kind of thing isn't really much of an inconvenience.

At one point I made a side trip to check out an alternative trail--on my own so as not to force the group to get even more wet than they already were. As I started down the other trail, I flushed a ruffed grouse and her chicks. I should say, first I heard the loud wingbeats of a flushed grouse. Then I saw a lot of small, round brown things scatter up into the nearby trees. I got my binoculars on one, and only then realized it was a grouse chick, still spotted and fluffy with down. I had no idea that grouse chicks could fly while so small! With my next step, I flushed another chick; it had opted to hunker down rather than fly. It flew about ten feet up into a nearby tree. Off in the woods, meanwhile, the mother grouse was crashing around and giving a distress call in an attempt to lure me away from the chicks. I didn't want to accidentally step on one or distress her or them any further, and the trail ahead looked quite swampy, so I turned back and rejoined the group waiting in the wet field.

This is what it's like
to be a deer--belly wet
in tall grass, alert.

May 4: Sparrows in the mist

We decided to embark on a staff outing up Beech Hill today, despite what we call 100% humidity: light rain and heavy fog. The barrens were bright with blooming blueberries, sign of hope for this summer's harvest. I even saw some bees among them, undaunted by the wet. Something about the mist seemed to amplify birdsong. Or perhaps, because my vision was limited, my sense of hearing was enhanced, because the "bouncing ball" song of a field sparrow rang out across the fields loud and clear. From various corners, the towhee's "drink your tea" song resonated, as well--from perhaps as many as six or seven individual birds altogether, though the disorienting fog made it a challenge to pinpoint their locations. At the summit, at least one song sparrow and a handful of Savannah sparrows made their presence known, darting in the fog, chancing a song or two. Not much of a view, but the soundscape more than made up for it. 

Field sparrows return

to the field where they hatched, sing

their father's same song.

August 25: Field in the Rain

In the middle of a torrential rainstorm, I await my co-worker (who has the key) at the Tranquility Grange in Lincolnville. I'm sitting in my car, listening to music and admiring the raindrop-distorted view out my windows.

I could sit here for hours, I think, contemplating the wild beauty of these fields and the old, shingled grange hall, inside of which, I know, all is dry, warm, and a little musty. We will sit on long, numbered pews with horsehair cushions within walls featuring historic plates and old letters, while outside the rain will continue to fall. This is the rural Maine I love. 

Fields in a downpour--

lush, wet, beautiful tangle.

Me, dry in my car.