Sabbath

I’ve taken a few walks this week. This shaggy little fawn, along with his mother and sibling, greeted us on one of them.

I worked hard to photograph these little birds in the brush, and this is the best I could do. “It looks like a chipping sparrow, but that can’t be, this time of year,” I said.

“It’s a tree sparrow! It has a spot on the breast!” said Older Daughter. Like me, she’s never seen a tree sparrow. But unlike me, who sees a new bird and goes home to look it up in the bird book, she reads the bird book and actually remembers details like that before seeing the bird. It’s amazing to me.

We also discovered a beaver lodge at one of the ponds we visit. I don’t think it’s inhabited now, but the beavers had been extremely active at some point. I like this photo of the various chewed-off trees leading down to the lodge at the pond’s edge.

We saw some other neat things too — logs decorated with all kinds of interesting moss and lichen patterns, bracket fungus, woodpecker holes, geese, a kingfisher, nests. On the way out, I heard a chorus of strident little birds. The girls went ahead and saw a Cooper’s hawk sitting in a low branch, surrounded by tattling chickadees and titmice. (It must be akin to having all the french fries on your plate rise up and start scolding!) He took one look at us and gave up, flying off to find better prospects.

But what strikes me most today is how often I only hear, or half-see, or wonder. This morning, for instance. I had to be home and ready to head out for a family activity at 9:00, so at 7:00 I went back to where the girls and I saw the coyote the other day.

That’s the bridge we were standing on when the coyote tore past us. I knew I probably wouldn’t see it again, but I wanted to go back when I could be quiet.

I saw no coyotes. But in the bushes on the way there, I heard a heavy deer startle and gallop away before I saw it. I was resoundingly scolded by a red squirrel who couldn’t seem to find enough curses to convey his displeasure from a hiding place somewhere to the left. As I got closer to my destination, a large raptor of some kind launched just above me and flew off, low, into the evergreens a little ways away, quickly enough that all I caught was a glimpse of mottled brown and white. Its tail wasn’t red. An owl? A hawk? In the distance, I glimpsed a dark, blackish, feline-looking animal melting away behind some trees. And over the course of the whole walk, I heard (but failed to see) a pileated woodpecker laughing no less than three times.

It was frustrating. There is still a pleasure in being in the woods; I enjoy the sense of insignificance of being surrounded by all kinds of purposeful activity that has nothing to do with me. But there is always a frustration too. Every walk reveals one new discovery, but far more mysteries and questions and fleeting almost-sights. When I have the right perspective, I see this as a good thing. But today I was just disappointed.

I think, actually, it means I need to take a sabbath rest from the camera, at least a short one. It’s a wonderful instrument that has opened my eyes and started an adventure of sorts for our family. But today I noticed the pressure it generates. Instead of enjoying the world, I was looking for a picture. I think in the end I missed more than a photo-op. I missed the real pleasure I could have had from starting the day the way I did.

This Wendell Berry poem is about the tyranny of words, but it could just as easily describe the tyranny of the camera, or anything else that gets hold of us and makes us miss the marrow:

Though the air is full of singing
my head is loud
with the labor of words.

Though the season is rich
with fruit, my tongue
hungers for the sweet of speech.

Though the beech is golden
I cannot stand beside it
mute, but must say

“It is golden,” while the leaves
stir and fall with a sound
that is not a name.

It is in the silence
that my hope is, and my aim.

The rest of “The Silence” is here.

Think I’ll put the camera in its case for awhile and just… look around.