This Bird Doesn't Speak English
Saturday, June 3Ð
I was awakened from a two-hour nap in Red's Shed by the "creeketing" of insects and sun flitting through leaves. I have not used Red's Shed since two years ago, but was forced to sleep there last night. It was full darkness when sleep straggled away and I became aware of plywood pressing up into my left shoulder ... an occasional irritant if the full-sized air mattress hasn't been given a dozen huffs of new life before retiring. Since I'd done that earlier this night I knew the hard urgent pressing from below was a bad sign.
Leak.
It took little effort to come fully awake once I comprehended the seriousness of the trouble. Rolled onto my back to spread-eagle over a larger air surface, much like the tactic I'd employ to soften the blow to discover the parachute was left at home on the kitchen table. I laid for several minutes, brain stumbling through cobwebs of sleep, scanning through a window for signs that morning might be near and I could just get up for the day.
No.
The light on my watch quit working years ago, so I shuffled through pockets for a lighter. Flicked it, read the dial: 12:45; at least four hours before morning light and a reasonable excuse to arise into the day. I reckoned that I could hold my breath flat on my back for the next few hours and hope for the best. But I knew, silently sinking, I couldn't last. Nor would I sleep, worrying over the inevitability of collapse. So, I struggled up out of my flaccid balloon, lit a candle and put on jeans and shoes, muttering vulgar silent thoughts about Chinese technicians who'd had a bad day when they electro-crafted my bed. Flashlight hadn't been brought in from the truck so, out into the black closet of night and slumbering woods. As loud and raucous as a June day is in this forest, night can be deafeningly silent ... the only sound is the hiss of inner ear hammers and anvils trying to process something--anything. Absolute silence is a sensation I experience less and less as the world grows louder. I don't realize how much is missed until real silence arises, such as tonight.
I amused myself with humor: "what if, while walking through this blindness to the truck, a large hand should suddenly clap me on the back and a snarly voice burst, "Hello big feller!" Best to put such finicky ideas away. Quickly. They only lead to guttural blurts and explosive sprints back to the safety of the cabin. Cab light bursts on, grab the flashlight, slam driver door, trudge back to the cabin, bundle pillows into sleeping bags and comforter, throw it on the shoulder and negotiate my double-wide load out through the cabin door and onward toward the sleeper.
Red's Shed, built in the mid-sixties and named for Merilee, is a six foot by eight foot plywood structure set atop stacked sidewalk blocks three feet off the ground. Children and midgets can stand erect inside, although persons taller than five feet must hunch the head and bang the center joist, at least once anyway. Two storm windows are hinged on each side wall with screening stapled inside, superb accommodations for light and cross drafts during summer. Linoleum (white with gala flecky designs) holds the floor in place and also affords a brightening effect.
The sleeper was originally leveled and nailed between two birch trees. As the trees grew, it cantered off-level. So the 2x10 floor joists were released from the trunks and placed on ground-based sidewalk block stacks. Until two years ago Red's Shed was unutilized and suffering the affects of nature wanting her back. Window glass cracked or missing, paint peeling, internal bleeding. When I began coming again, the main cabin mouse population agitated me into regaining the upper hand by replacing and re-glazing the glass, scouring linoleum and windows, twice, sweeping accumulations of spider webs and acorn husks and mouse turds out the door. The linoleum had been laid free-floating, not quite big enough to cover the entire floor. While sweeping, it was necessary to pull back curled up edges to get at the broken acorns and vermin effluvia.
Whoa!
Along the west wall, where the floor meets the sides, was a gaping space running wide and narrow along the entire width. Other than windows, the main cabin and the sleeper walls are constructed of half-inch plywood. For years porcupines have gnawed away patches of surface wood, in places chewing completely through. Dad's theory explained that porcupines like to eat the glue holding plywood layers together, so that's why they did it. Although he'd never gotten the answer straight from a porcupine, the theory became Truth due to the lack of better explanation. Years ago, returning from a hike to the river, while approaching from the road I heard a loud scraping coming from near the sleeper. Pausing to scan from the road, I spied a large porcupine gnawing the underside of the floor. I ran back down to Andersons and begged the use of a twenty-two. Hurried back, quietly stalked closer, aimed, and ended the assault on the plywood glue. Just like mosquitoes and gnats, there are abundant natural resources to fill in when one critter gets dead. Sometime during the years of disuse another porcupine had discovered the joy of plywood glue and munched his way through, when no one was looking.
Strips of pine boards cut to size and nailed into place from the inside once again sealed the sleeper against insects and mice and moths and ticks. Or so I thought.
The sleeper has had a queen sized air bed for several years. It's held its breath continuously and, with a few gasps of new life, holds EZ and I comfortably snuggled.
1:25 a.m.-
Bedding finally arranged, EZ jumped up and settled into her place at the bottom right end of the bed as naturally as though it had not been two years since we'd last slept there. She settled and curled and quickly breathed of sleep. I laid awake for an hour waiting for slumber to resume, listening to this change in locale.
Arriving Wednesday night about 5:30 I made a "pocket walk" down to the river. (It's the sort one takes with hands in pockets, because the pace is slow and they're not needed for balance.) Began to think about clearing the fast-growing tag alders away from the riverbank. Fifteen years ago I opened it back up, spent an afternoon sawing and hacking it back into a pleasant airy view and grassy bank. It's a project that needs doing every few years or the view of the swimming hole becomes obscured and hindered and unappealing. When I was a kid and we swam there, the streamside bank was gloriously sunny and free of overgrowth. Dad made sure of it.
I imagined how it could look once again and wanted it that way. Went back to the cabin and loaded saws, beer, brush nippers and cameras into the truck for an evening of play. Hacked and sawed, sweat and swatted bugs all for the sake of creating a sensation of civility as I knew it could be. I flung half of the debris into the river's slow current, the rest was dragged into the woods and stashed out of sight. It is a pleasure to watch sublime transform from ratty.
Raked up decades of dead leaves, rotting sticks and freshly cut growth clotted above the rapids. A park emerged from the mess. This is a spot to wonder and, swim and listen. And be alone. Yesterday morning a great blue heron waded the shallows across the stream then leaped onto silent wings, flapped a leafy branch and cruised quietly upstream.
Driving to the store about 6 p.m. last night to recharge the camera, I noticed Herb, Leon, Axel and AT&T Don, standing between two pickup trucks. One had its hood jawed wide. I parked as Dolly pushed the Store door open to tell me the news. (It's all news to her.) I talked smart with her for a minute or two then strolled over to see what was happening with the guys. Rounding past the open pickup engine compartment I noticed three cans of beer, one held to lips, draining into a throat. "Well, hell. Let me go fetch mine too."
"What kind is it?"
"Old Milwaukee."
"OK."
Back I went, beer in hand, to stand and discover what normal guys talk about at a rural crossroads store on an early June evening when the sun slants yellow across up-tipped caps and insects swirl and hummingbirds swoop. Central to the wide range of discussion was this newly acquired heavy-duty thirteen-year old Ford pickup truck, and whether the suspension was adequate to haul a trailer full of Yaks from there to somewhere else.
I asked about access to Thunder Meadow, whether there is any, without trespassing. A well-used plat book was got from a littered pickup floor, fingers jabbed into smudged pages in search of a route. Empty beer cans arced high over the cab and into the back of Axel's truck.
"You want another?"
"Yeah. Thanks."
A fresh beer is dug out of a twelve pack on a someone's pickup truck floor, yielding a hint that it'd once upon a time been cold. For some reason, one maybe nobody knew, the Yak pickup had been idling for ten minutes. Exhaust fumes weaved through our gathering. Several of us went to lean on forearms into the reverberating engine compartment and speculate where the mysterious power steering leak could be. Notice was made of a fresh reconditioned radiator, and the unusual presence of dual California smog pumps (disconnected), and how fine-sounding the 351 High Output engine purred. Another empty beer can soared and a refill was gotten.
Herb wandered away to do something else. Don and I talked Yak ranching over the idling motor as another guy in his mid-thirties arrived to rough up Axel and Leon in a Friday evening rollick. Beer cans flew, words got louder, punctuated by vulgarities. Laughter coarsened. Somebody turned the motor off.
Time to depart into our solitary evenings, leaving the threesome to their high trajectory as another couple arrived and added to the fun.
Retrieved the partially charged camera, said thanks and "good-bye" to Meg who was grabbing a bite of supper in the Store kitchen, out into the truck and away north for exploration.
I came upon a glorious large stand of lupines in the height of prime bloom, glowing in the early evening sun. It's fun to conjecture how, in the middle of nowhere, can there be such a crop when I'd seen no others within miles. I photographed a few of them, marveling at the gamut of hues from pinks to violets to fuchsia and everywhere in between. Noting the location to visit again sometime, EZ and I drove back past Herb's park, blue sky dappling off both ponds and gold sun angling low across tall meadow grasses. Got the fire revived and spent the remaining hour of light listening to the night settle.
"To hear musical genius, go to the woods," Robert Winkler has said.
Always in the faded half-light of dusk, always inside a forest, always when the woods has stopped its daytime noise, and never else, have I heard the fluid tone floating into the clearing on silent air. Whether all other birds and animals have gone to sleep, or sense to be quiet out of respect, I don't know. The actors all know. The song is not loud or pushy. Always it moves beneath the high canopy, echoing off leafy ceilings, rebounding from tree trunks, surrounding ferns and filling every space with august articulation.
Birds chirp and cheep, a few even caw, or sing "jee's." But nothing comes close to this. Comparing its song to ordinary birds is improper and God knows who we are.
The hair on my head
tingles every summer to hear its sophisticated song, surprising, drifting
secret and unseen. Although the words "fluid" and "liquid"
attempt to explain its sound, this bird doesn't speak English, so any
attempts by a mankind person mean nothing to another who's never heard it.
"Jit-jit-jit's" are like Morse Code included in some written descriptions,
but a Wood Thrush's "jit-jit-jit" on paper is not how he wants us
to hear it.
I found a Website that recorded a solo Wood Thrush performance. And I got to hear it out of season in March from the ease of my stool.