The Secret Garden
Post #21
I arrive at the lake at seven AM, forty-five minutes before sunrise. The early morning in the faint light of dawn is so quiet and peaceful, even now when sunrise is as late in “clock time” as it gets all year, just before we turn the clocks back next weekend.
My car says it’s 35 degrees Fahrenheit, three degrees above freezing. There is just the hint of a breeze but it is mostly calm. It is cold, but not as cold as I expect. I annually forget that in the fall the ground is still so warm that near-freezing does not feel as cold as it does at mid-winter. My feet are warm.
As I walk down the road behind the locked gates, I see a shadow about 10 yards to my left. It’s a young buck with small antlers standing perfectly still as I walk by. He is watching me but he never moves. I say a prayer that he will make it through hunting season. I keep walking, listening to the Canadian geese somewhere in the distance. A Cooper’s hawk zips by and I hear blue jays squawking in the direction he flew.
As I get closer to the lake I see a larger group of deer, females and this year’s young. In their midst I spot another buck, this one with larger antlers. He stands with such magnificence and dignity that even though it is too dark and the camera can’t focus, I stop to take a photo. I can see his breath on the air, I can feel the pulse of our heartbeats, a moment of connection as we both know we have been seen by the other.
The buck moves off through the brush which reminds me of a little cove I recently discovered and have wanted to visit at sunrise. With all the rain the last few days, I’m afraid the water will be too high, but I am happy to find I can just get back there if I climb over a log. The cove is just as quiet as I imagined. Even though it’s Saturday and there are already boats out on the lake, in this little cove I can’t hear anything but the birds and it feels as if I have the whole world to myself.
I sit down on the sand and wait for the sun to rise through the light fog that drifts over the water. The leaves on the trees nearby have all turned yellow, seemingly overnight. The little bank of sand is wet from two days of rain. A dozen or more blue jays are flying back and forth across the cove, squawking and making such a wide variety of sounds one might think there were ten different species of birds calling.
A flock of geese flies over, their voices just a little different than the more common Canadian geese and I look up through my binoculars to confirm they are greater white-fronted geese moving south. I can hear the smaller birds starting to wake up in the trees. The gentle tap-tap-tap of a downy woodpecker, the fluttering of a male and female cardinal in the underbrush.
The sun rises and I suddenly notice the webs strung over the little plants sticking up from the water in front of me are twinkling as if someone strung tiny Christmas lights along the web. I notice how the sun lights up a leaf laying on the ground like a stained glass window. I feel the warmth of the sun on my nose and watch as the fog creates an orb of light where the sun should be.
As I quietly rise and turn around, I notice three bluebirds sitting on the branches of a dead tree. Their reddish breasts look extra saturated in the light of the rising sun. The bluebirds chase each other about in the branches and they are joined by half a dozen yellow-rumped warblers. They zip back and forth between the dead tree and the other trees, going deep in the leaves and then zipping back out. I stand still and wait knowing the birds will come close if I am patient.
In the tree nearest me, a yellowish head pokes out from the leaves and I manage one photo. I know it is a warbler but I am not sure what specific species it is. A Carolina wren flies in and lands near the base of a bush. The wren forages through the underbrush, resisting my attempts to get a photo until he finally pops up onto a branch for a second and then he disappears again. The female cardinal has also been foraging out of sight until she momentarily gives me enough of a glimpse to get a shot.
The sparrows arrive, flitting in and out of the leaves and never sitting still. Small chipping sparrows with their reddish heads, dark-eyed juncos with their gray head and bodies and the first American tree sparrow I have seen this season with it’s bi-colored bill. Meanwhile the blue jays crash the party every few minutes, each time with lots of noise, movement and drama. In and out, across the cove and back, over the trees, they are busy this morning.
It feels as if I am in a secret garden, miles and miles from the human world but in fact I’m only a few yards from a parking lot and a half mile from the road. My secret garden is brimming with life, overflowing with movement, colors and soft sounds. Yet it is also beautifully still, moving at the pace of slow water without rushing to be somewhere else. It feels as I imagine the line from Wendell Berry’s poem, “The Peace of Wild Things” - “I rest in the grace of the world, and I am free”.
Ah, beautiful! My health restricts my ability to make little excursions like this, so lovely to be able to 'walk with you, to your Secret Garden, and to see it through your words, and photos, thank you!
Beautiful! Love the pictures of the birds.