Dismal weeks
It has been a dismal few weeks. My six-year-old son Rocky fell and gashed the back of his head. I took him to a doctor who stitched him up.
My sister Bev, who is seriously ill with diabetes, will have a kidney transplant soon. Her daughter Erin is the donor. If the transplant doesn't take, Bev will have to be on dialysis.
And my wife Linda and I can't seem to shake the flu. I haven't gotten out much to watch birds or enjoy the greening of the earth. So late one afternoon I shook off my torpor and set out to walk the trail, which begins almost outside my door, down to the Little Calumet River.The river trail
Although their flowers had not yet blossomed, the leaves of spring beauty, may apple, hepatica and other wildflowers lined the trail. And the trees and shrubs had budded. The earth will soon wear her spring finery.
Golden-crowned kinglets, tinkling like silver bells, flitted among the trees. A rufous-sided towhee sang, "drink-your-tea," from the shrubs. Fox sparrows scratched noisily in the leaf litter.
A turkey vulture and a red-tailed hawk soared overhead. From deep within the woods, a great-horned owl called its sonorous, "WHOO-WHOO."
I struggled slowly along the trail and brooded. I was too weakened by flu to make it to the river and home again by nightfall. I couldn't do just this one thing, just walk to the river and back. I turned around and headed home.Bzeep
The day was fading when I passed a field and heard a strong "bzeep!" in a thicket. Although the sound had an insect-like quality, I knew it was a bird.
It was an American woodcock. And it was the right time of year for the woodcock's courtship flight, which I had never seen, so I watched and waited.
The woodcock rose from the thicket and spiralled upwards. The air moving through its wing feathers made a musical trilling. The bird circled and trilled a 100-feet or more above my head.
And then it began a zig-zag flight towards the ground, like an autumn leaf falling, while whistling a low-pitched, three-note song. After a time, it rose from the thicket again.
The "bzeep!," the trilling of wings, and the descent song are all part of the male woodcock's courtship display. More woodcocks took flight as day faded to dusk.
I stood shivering in the last light and watched the woodcocks rising and soaring, and falling to earth only to rise again. And I grasped that this rising and soaring, this falling and rising again is the rhythm of life itself.
Copyright Bud Polk, 1997
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