This morning, early, the dawn was alive with a convergence
of sound, from the ground to the sky, and from every other discernable
direction. It began with a whisper
before the light had even settled in upon the land, but soon came with its full
strength, a resounding chorus, just as the sun began to peek inquisitively over
the eastern ridge.
A woodpecker knocking on a tree kept a heartbeat like a
solitary drummer on a single block of wood. The Meadowlark joined in with its flutelike whistles. Mourning doves and their low, sad,
whoo-oo, hoo, hoo, hoo. Robins calling cheerily,
cheerily, cheer-up, cheer-up. Finch, and their canary-like warble. Quail even, with a loud ca-ca-cow,
or ca-caah-co, and their clucking
whit-whit. Wrens with that distinctive bubbling chatter; the Sparrows
chimed in with whistles and trills, and their sweet, high tseep’s. They
all contributed to the surreal, and the profound. The Bluebird’s soft warble, it’s phew, and somewhat harsher chuck. The
Blackbird’s kseeee or ksheek. The
Western Tanager’s pit-err-ick, pit-err-ick, like the soft, illusory sound of a lone percussive
woodwind.
All these creatures, conspiring together in a magnanimous
and harmonious effort to teach the world to sing, to lead the way in song, and
we were fittingly hypnotized. You
might say we were mesmerized, not only by the effort, but by the very nature of
the melodious composition itself.
A Mormon Tabernacle Choir of feathered friends, a congregate of winged
songsters in an outdoor aviary perched on risers at least a thousand rows deep
into the trees.
It was the sound of pleasant smiles on a million euphoric
faces.
Two geese flew by just overhead honking like geese will do,
as if stuck in early morning traffic on the way to get their coffee.
Coyotes off in the distance barked in arousing recognition
of the exceptional aural presentation, rare as the sun is bright. They hooted, howled, yipped, and
yapped, like puppies on a new mowed lawn.
The sweet sound of nature was joined unapologetically by the
mechanical grinding of one solitary logging truck off in the distance winding
its way slowly down the mountain; it’s motor somehow complimenting the
arrangement, rather than diminishing it, like the rumbling of a kettledrum
behind the clarinets, flutes, and strings. Harmonizing, blending, as it were, the sacred with the
profane.
