Spring Reigns

Every September/October, I declare fall my favorite season. Something about the temperatures cooling, the reds, oranges and yellows painting themselves onto trees. Playoff baseball and football season starting. And while I dig the changing of each season, I've held on to fall being the greatest. Until this year.

After a winter of self-imposed hermithood, of cold rain, of dismal lack of color; the rebirth of spring feels different this year. Walking the same roads of Baileys Neck and Jeffries Road, the world is different. You can look at the same tree (above) or down the same lane (below) and they are not the same as they were two months earlier.

Cracking a beer, with burgers on the grill, and walking up the yard, the sun and the dandelions smile in silent conversation with each other. The girls break out bare feet, lacrosse sticks, and a cheap bouncy ball and invent a sport somewhere between badminton and balloon tennis.

The spring has been full of Eastern Bluebirds, American Goldfinches, Northern Flickers, Blue Jays, and Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds at the feeders and along the road. And last spring, as I was descended upon by Cardinals when I ran, it was a phenomenon I noted but didn't understand. There was some Cardinal connection, but I couldn't place it. This spring, the Cardinals still divebomb, they still say hello every morning and evening. I see them when I walk, or when I run, or at the feeders. The difference is that this spring I know why. And knowing is half the battle. #YoJoe

In the Field

My mind works better when my legs are moving. Thoughts are terrain, felt and experienced. There are things to be learned in the field that can't be learned seated in the classroom, or behind a desk.

My reading of late has been sucked up by Kenn Kaufman's "Kingbird Highway." It's a bit like "On the Road," if Kerouac was a birder. Kaufman dropped out of high school at age 16 and spent a year hitchhiking and getting himself around the country to see as many birds as he could. It's a look into the obsessed birding culture, as it was taking shape in the 1970s. He is now known as one of North America's top birders. I'm not a birder, but I've been a bit taken by certain members of the feathered fliers in recent months. Kaufman's book chronicles his search for himself and how he found his place on the road; in the field.

I dig the notion of field guides. Where those who have taken their search out into the world, share what they have found. Some field books describe geography, or species, some describe the writer's inner landscape as influenced by its surroundings. For some reason in the spring, I seem to reach for Seamus Heaney's "Field Work" and Robert Hass's "Field Guide." Their words, their experiences don't give answers, they make me want to get off the couch and go find things out for myself.

Words come up necessarily short. Hass gets it. Sitting in the woods, checking out birds and flowers, he wants to get them down, capture them:

                                    But I had the odd
feeling, walking to the house
to write this down, that I had left
the birds and the flowers in the field,
rooted or feeding. They are not in my
head, are not now on this page.

Warm sun on still snow-filled, frozen yard, we were building snowmen, throwing snowballs, exploring, laughing. In the trees all around us, in a moment of recognition were Eastern Bluebirds. They were close, they were playing, they were darting between pine trees. In my life, I have never seen anything like it; it was a totally new and novel experience. But I can't recreate it here. I can't conjure it or make it real for anyone who hasn't experienced the same thing, in the field. And I couldn't have known it from a book, no matter how well written. Though I guess I can recall it, if prompted by someone else's experience.

Science and spirituality have the same shortcomings, when left to be found and learned in books. I can know that the Earth goes around the sun and the sun rises in the east, but that takes on a much more profound reality when running my first ultramarathon on a 15 degree February morning, when the warmth of the sun hits a group of us runners, headlamps are switched off, and the heart and body are warmed and lighter. And whether sitting in a church or walking through the woods, faith or a glimpse or intuition of something bigger than yourself, something not quite explainable enters the soul of its own accord, not through words alone.

Clearly I have some spring restlessness going on. The need to get out and explore. But one of the things I am digging the most these days, are how many new experiences, in the field, are right under my nose; in my yard; nearby. Birds I've never paid attention to. Remembering the shakiness of being on ice skates. Running with good friends. Neither Thoreau nor Annie Dillard had to go far afield to find themselves, nature, the Universe. They just had to look for themselves.

Finding My Bluebird

I feel like I am reasonably in tune and observant. But sometimes I don't notice things until I do. I've talked about herons, and being divebombed by cardinals, and this fall having blue jays making themselves known.

At the end of last week I was running on a back road, along the edge of woodlands, when a couple birds much deeper blue than a blue jay were playing from tree to tree, branch to branch. Brilliant blue on their backs and wings, but a ruddy brown on their bellies. They were all I could see. Why have I not noticed these birds more? They can't be that uncommon, I know they've been here all along. Why have I never honed in on them? I was given an "Audubon Field Guide to the Mid-Atlantic States" for Christmas. I thought about those blue birds for the rest of the run. Folks who know me, or return readers here know I am obsessed with the color blue.

I put the field guide to its first use: Eastern Bluebird. Sialia sialis. Thrush family. "Male brilliant blue above, chest, and sides rusty orange; ...sits upright on snags and wires. ...Habitat: fields, woodland edges, farms."

On Sunday I ran my longest run of 2015 to date. At about the halfway point, one of my all-time favorite songs in general, and favorite running songs came on: Zeppelin's "Ramble On." I've heard it hundreds of times. In my head I can sing along with most of the words. It resonates deeply with me. But as the song was ending, I heard Robert Plant sing, "I can't find my bluebird." Another goddamn bluebird I hadn't noticed before, though I've clearly heard it over and over again.

What's up, bluebirds?

I dug around. Bluebirds are often taken to mean happiness. Contentment. Joy.

Don't get me wrong, sometimes a bluebird is just a bluebird. And I can just dig them for being another opportunity for the color blue to say hey. But sometimes I also like to dwell on things and see if the Universe is continuing its ongoing conversation. A book I have on hand at the house, "Animal Speak," by Ted Andrews, did me some justice talking about herons (my main bird totem), cardinals and blue jays. What has Ted compiled and curated about bluebirds?

When bluebirds show up as a totem, it should first of all remind you to take time to enjoy yourself... can be symbolic of a need to work hard and play hard... symbolic of a passage, a time of movement into another level of being... a new confidence and happiness in coming into your own... If a bluebird has come into your life, look for opportunities to touch the joyful and intrinsically native aspects of yourself that you may have lost touch with.

Where I am in life these days, there is some deep resonance going on there. Reading elsewhere, there is even more focus on bluebirds and transition. Yep, that's there too.

Happiness. Contentment. Joy. Transition. Work hard. Play hard.

Robert Plant can't find his bluebird, so he is rambling on. Right now, I'm finding my bluebird.