CHANGES IN THE AIR

Flux, Flow and the Future

Canada Geese were barely audible, wave after wave, all flying north and at greater altitude than I have seen in our short time in Missouri.

We both heard it in the same instant, and straight to the window, an hour before local sunrise, we listened: bird song out of the long silence of bitter winter--a sign and hope of spring. I needed that!

The first calls of the year from cardinals, white throated sparrows and bluebirds were recorded in my Merlin birdsong ID app with my phone held against the screen.

Seeing my location, the app suggested that I update to get the MIDWESTERN birds database, since the ones from the Appalachians might not range this far west. This promises the possibility I will hear bird species new to me in our new western incarnation. That prospect gives me even more reason to pay attention.

The resurrection of life outside our window reminded me, with some wistfulness, of a year ago March 1, when the first tree swallows visited the nest boxes, but did not stay, likely moving on to more northern nesting places.

By mid-March, the new resident breeding pairs would run the bluebirds away from most boxes until the swallows would leave suddenly by July. I miss those birds. And my crows, of course.

April tree swallows on the “Nada Tree” which was, er, not a tree but the locust sapling it was built from stood there for four years and housed owls, crows, hawks and dozens of goldfinches near the porch Ah the porch.

BUT BABY, IT’S (NOT) COLD OUTSIDE

The buds are plumping, the maples showing weak shades from the red pigments on the pallet. It has been so warm here all of sudden that, after rains expected next week, we might get a flush of early mushrooms in what's left of the Lenoir woods. (A story for another time.)

In Roanoke there was a pollen alert yesterday. I can't say for sure, but isn't this a week or two early, even by recent standards? I can't help but acknowledge with regret that bird migration, pollen production and insect emergence and so many other natural rhythms are out of sync.

Apologies, fellow creatures, we have not done a good job of perpetuating the world as a place fit for biology as you--and we--used to know and depend on it. Silly people.

CHANGES IN and UNDER THE HOOD

We have a neighbor two doors down who sees just well enough to ring our doorbell five days a week at 9:45. She and Ann walk down to the Strength and Balance exercise session five minutes down the long hallway.

Initially I went down too, to the gym next door, on MWF. Recently though, I’ve put my mental health ahead of physical, and I stay alone and enjoy my own thoughts briefly. I say I will get to the gym later in the day, but that’s not working out well.

This Fred Space is all the more to be cherished, as lately, those wee hours that I have so long held as uninterrupted personal focus time are no longer sacrosanct. I have company.

She increasingly gets out of bed (but is not really awake) and can only sometimes be convinced that the best thing is do is to go back to bed and read for 10 minutes to fall asleep. But she is not really awake to be reasoned with, so we both have deal with disturbed sleep cycles on top of the other complications that go with an increasingly unreliable memory.

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And from that jumping-off place, so much more could be told for long-time readers to know the back story, from at least 2020. Covid was not the only--or even the most eminent--health threat, there in our final home in the Blue Ridge.

The dynamics of life have changed for us as we age, and are changing still, but thankfully at last, we are in a continuum of care where our changing needs can be met. And more on that soon perhaps, as I settle on if and how to tell that story.

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But still the sky is full of wonders…