In Boston yesterday and ornithologist said significantly, “If you held the bird in your hand –;” but I would rather hold it in my affections. – Thoreau, Journal, 5/10/54
I am 150 miles southwest of my usual range, here in Connecticut on a family visit, and, by coincidence, now in Stafford Springs for the Soapstone Mountain Trail Race. It’s a blustery morning, with the wind blowing cool reminder from home.
I replace the word “race” with the friendlier “run” and set out at the command of our director, a slight woman perched atop a glacial erratic. We are a many-footed beast, and we shuffle down a dirt road, headed for the single-track trail ahead. There, at first, we will bunch like a human scrunchie, but, over time, we will stretch all the way to solitude.
Our way is marked by white paint dots and, at junctions by ankle-high flaglets that remind of a dog’s electronic boundary. “Don’t go over there, boy,” I say to self and I stay of track.
The run becomes a collage of little moments and the always-rhythm of attention to footsteps; the sights and my own little song take me elsewhere, out of this world.
An then, at 20k, just past the last aid station with its caloric and human boost – “Nice going; almost there” – I’m flagging; the little laughter of two girls who just passed me recedes in the hardwoods ahead, and it’s just tired me here. Sigh, why? A flash of color draws my eye and a scarlet tanager lights at eye level on a branch 15 feet away. His brightness wrings a smile from me, lifts my head, and he stays, his scarlet kindled against the lime-green leaves just unfurling. I stop, watch, want to trill a birdsong of thanks. Any sense of needing to be elsewhere vanishes.
Now I can go on.
So it is to be bird blessed in woods near or far.