One of the worst parts about having the luxury to go on vacation is that visiting another beautiful place can make you waver in the commitment you have for your home. Like me, among the long leaf pines of North Carolina, walking deeper and deeper each day into a newfound love, you might reconsider everything.
Sand hills give way to horse country, an outskirts community of large and yet modest estates, all of them connected by trails and unimproved roads. Early, sun-filled mornings, and horses are the only traffic. Bluebirds enjoy the break between these farms and the wilderness; dozens of them fly from the fence to the pasture, then, because of me, back into the bare trees.
There are dozens and dozens of birds. Here, the bird watcher can gaze with the omission of habitat loss. Here — where there is not one nuthatch, there are hundreds — I feel less guilty.
Walk in the woods and soon you begin to recognize the wake-like disturbance of man among beasts. Step slowly and lightly, but they still flee, nothing but fanned wings and darting shapes, the birds vanish.
I continue down a path to a little lake and then stop. The grebes glide toward the opposite shore. I kneel on a sandy bank and wait for my echo to cease. In moments, the birds begin to return — I am surrounded on all sides, if not by their sight then their song.
For me, this is pretty much heaven.
I think of home, and how sometimes I see nothing.
The longer you sit, the more there is to observe. I lean back on my heels and cast my eyes gratefully upward. Three vultures are circling high above, and it takes me a moment to see the lake shore from their perspective. Why is that large creature staying so long at the water’s edge? Is that thing even moving? The big and gothic birds circle slowly and take a lower, longer look.
Through binoculars, I can see, without doubt, it is me they are looking at, and I, they were hoping, was about to expire. Seeing this made me laugh, but eventually I stand and begin back up the hill.
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