Spider silk strands strung across branches like streamers at a child’s birthday party. Brushing my face with my fingertips, wiping off the soft, light weight of it as it drags across my face, stuck to the stubble. Songbirds here on the trail sing just loud enough to drown the drone of man’s progress.
Mother mallard leads her ducklings, unsure of their own movements, waddling single file, one row from bill to tail, stopping on a log to bask in the warm glow of the morning sun. Huddled together in a clump of brown and yellow, fuzzy feathers, beaks tucked under wing. Nuzzling one another, nipping for mites and shaking off glistening beads of water. Protected by the cover of the reeds and rushes along the bank, the hen’s gaze is out toward the sky and open water as an eagle circles overhead, letting lose an awful cry that must be terrifying to mother and child alike.
Rabbits and robins. Foxglove and salmon berries. Sunlight dancing on droplets of dew, weighing down petal and pine. Lush carpets of moss in varying shades of green cling to trunks, logs and limbs, some of it hanging like furry scalagties. The hummingbird zigs and zags, darting left and right, barnstorming and dive bombing, putting stunt pilots to shame. A pair of sapsuckers thump their crimson heads like talking guns, tearing into and draining the lifeblood from pockmarked trees, which bear the scars of previous feasts.
A breeze rustles the trees, leaves defiantly dancing, mocking the wind in its failed attempts to best them from their branches; much too early for them to fall. A scalloped crease forms above, partitioning the promising bright blue from the ominous presence of the encroaching cumulonimbus. Petals turned eagerly upward, ready to drink and receive.
Shawn Seeley's Blog 