Last week my Smith River neighbor wrote to tell me that the first Swainson’s Thrush (soon to be known as the Russet-backed Thrush) had sent his vaporous song spiraling into the coastal forest at 4:40 a.m.
It never ceases to amaze me how your words take me home. Home to Ash Valley, in the Umpqua drainage where my family homesteaded and I grew up. I have your books and hope you plan to publish these recent words in your next one. I always feel like I have been given a gift to carefully unwrap and absorb it's joy each time you post. Once again, I thank YOU!
Oh, just south of Loon Lake? If so, great salamanders there! Thank you for your kind words, Vernelle. Book-wise, I’m not yet sure what will be coming beyond working on the salamander essays with Emily. I have a pile of essays that need some continuity and a home. I’m happy we have this connection!
A sumptuous sensory feast! I can taste the rhubarb cobbler of bird song...love all the juxtapositions and the way you entwine sorry and joy and here is to being thin-skinned breathing in the beauty of this still so miraculous world--even as the sorrow and worry also seeps in. Thank you!
Always such lovely comments, Marina! Thank you. Thin-skinned it is, at least until the world demands otherwise of us. And real rhubarb cobbler when I land back home …
Swainson's Thrush was the first bird I learned when I first began working in Pacific Northwest Forests. I learned it by its call, which I learned to mimic by whistling pretty well. It was a long time before I actually saw one in my binoculars.
It never ceases to amaze me how your words take me home. Home to Ash Valley, in the Umpqua drainage where my family homesteaded and I grew up. I have your books and hope you plan to publish these recent words in your next one. I always feel like I have been given a gift to carefully unwrap and absorb it's joy each time you post. Once again, I thank YOU!
Oh, just south of Loon Lake? If so, great salamanders there! Thank you for your kind words, Vernelle. Book-wise, I’m not yet sure what will be coming beyond working on the salamander essays with Emily. I have a pile of essays that need some continuity and a home. I’m happy we have this connection!
A sumptuous sensory feast! I can taste the rhubarb cobbler of bird song...love all the juxtapositions and the way you entwine sorry and joy and here is to being thin-skinned breathing in the beauty of this still so miraculous world--even as the sorrow and worry also seeps in. Thank you!
Always such lovely comments, Marina! Thank you. Thin-skinned it is, at least until the world demands otherwise of us. And real rhubarb cobbler when I land back home …
Another wonderful and cherished read Tom, thank you. Lori Heacock Dilling
And thank you, Lori, for stopping in to read!
Swainson's Thrush was the first bird I learned when I first began working in Pacific Northwest Forests. I learned it by its call, which I learned to mimic by whistling pretty well. It was a long time before I actually saw one in my binoculars.
They are built and behave to be invisible!