Saturday morning. I’m up early anxious to cash in on a rare warm and sun bleached day in a rather dismal April. A promising day of bird watching is ahead of me. My passion and my primal stress reliever.

But I have not yet shed the baggage of the work week. Impatience festers beneath the surface. Every small delay winds me up a bit more. Not the start I want to this coveted and self-indulgent day.

I arrive at the first of several birding hotspots I plan to visit. To my chagrin, fifteen or twenty cars are already parked there. A noisy crowd is most definitely not what I seek. I almost take a pass on this woodlot. Thankfully, intuition tells me not to do so.

I bird the woods with impatience steering clear of the talkative group of birders that grates on my nerves. Good birding but not great. I cross the narrow, dead-end road to the adjacent field of scrub bushes which always seems to hold something special for me. Mother Nature is waiting with the first moment to give pause of the day.

A tail bobbing Palm Warbler – a particularly brilliantly coloured specimen – pops out of a bush onto the ground. It poses there, just for me, displaying its golden yellow breast and jaunty brown cap. And, lest I miss it, flips its tail to reveal its golden rump.

I take a deep breath. A chunk of the week’s baggage sloughs off me.

On to the next stop – one of my very favourite birding locales. My game plan there is well established. First stop: the cut grass trail along the flowering bushes near the parking lot. Here, the next moment to give pause awaits.

A bubbling string of varied calls signals the first mimic Catbird of the spring. Catbirds do not boast much in the way of colour. But their slim, slate gray body and black cap are quite regal nonetheless. And again, lest I miss it, it turns its back to me and flips its tail to reveal chestnut undertail coverts.

Another deep breath. Another layer of impatience dissolves.

Down the gravel trail towards the pond. A flash of rufous brown. And another. A pair of Brown Thrashers. I creep forward to catch one rather uncharacteristically posed at the top of small pine. Showing off its rich brown jacket, elongated tail and curved bill. It flushes and drops down into the weeds.

I look sideways. A Sharp-shinned Hawk is poised in a small tree. Slim bodied, rounded wings, rusty-barred breast and hooked bill. A threat to the Thrasher but a joy to me.

Breath deeply again. The past week is slipping away.

Down through Cool Hollow to the marsh for the pièce de resistance.

A Green Heron, normally reclusive and hard to sight, flies into view and perches proudly on a fallen tree trunk. I creep closer to admire it. Thick, spear-like bill, chocolate brown neck with black border and glossy green back. And, oh yes, that piercing and self-possessed yellow eye that surveys the surroundings.

I breathe easy now. The week past is gone. Mother Nature’s living metaphors of serenity have redeemed me. The remainder of the day I can follow my heart’s whisperings. Giving pause where it is due and matching my pace to the rhythms of nature.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog. Visit www.smashwords.com to download a free preview of the e-book version.

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The helter-skelter world, which we launch ourselves bravely into each day, exacts a hefty toll. We need a refuge we can escape to where we can rest and rejuvenate our wounded soul.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.  Ralph Waldo Emerson: American essayist, philosopher, and poet

In a world that charges madly on in a race that never seems to end, I need nature’s slow dance of serenity. The playful, elegant fluttering of golden wings over a meadow splashed with a palette of wildflowers.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.  Blaise Pascal: French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher

In a constantly shape-shifting world where what was truth yesterday is irrelevant today, I need nature’s unassuming constancy. The teeming life of a cattail marsh where dragonflies waltz to the bullfrog’s symphony.

Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven. Rabindranath Tagore: Bengali poet, novelist, musician, and playwright

In a locked down world in which we need keys, pass cards and fobs to get in and sometimes even to get out, I need nature’s open arms. The Cool Hollow Trail that always sighs its welcome beneath a canopy of willows.

There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story. Linda Hogan: Native American poet, storyteller, academic, playwright, novelist

In a world where the din and clamour of machines, discontent and greed assaults my senses, I need nature’s noble peace and majesty. The slow grace of the seasons and the effortless exuberance of swallows in flights of fancy.

Nature is my living metaphor of serenity, constancy, open arms and the peace that surpasses all expression. Like a moth to a flame, I return to it again and again. I never tire of it nor it of me.

I long for spring and another walk through Cool Hollow.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel”. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog.

~ Subscribe to “Michael’s Metaphors of Life Journal aka Things That Make Me Go Hmmm” at its’ internet home www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog2. Instructions for subscribing are provided in the “Subscribe to this Blog: How To” instructions page in the right sidebar.

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