ONCE UPON a time there was a bird.

Gray in his feathered uniform, he lived on a suburban half-acre, in harmony with other creatures except those he liked to eat.

It was midday in midsummer. He had raised one noisy brood of chicks — exhausting work — and was preparing a new nest, when he stopped on a branch to sing. Birds sing to communicate. But sometimes they just sing. It was the kind of day when to be alive was enough. The bird’s little heart dilated with a pure love of summer.

A sudden urge came to him. He took to the air.

He left the familiar oaks and wooly lawn grasses. A current of warmth carried him forward. He soared above the houses and highways. Human beings moved on their wingless wheels below. Something somewhere was his destiny. It wasn’t that tree or that underbrush or that shaggy lawn. It was elsewhere.

He flew for miles.

The meadow was waiting for him.

It received him with open arms when he arrived. Spicy aromas enveloped him. He landed on a milkweed flower, not fully open, and surveyed this land of wonders from his perch.  He saw clouds of tiny flies rising and falling amid green sentinel-like grasses on undulating hills. The green expanse was baking in the sun. He clung to the stalk as it swayed to and fro. Flowers flecked the green sea with pink and orange and white, like cheerful confetti. Purple martens and bluebirds performed soaring maneuvers overhead.  Their aerial skill filled him with admiration. Seeds glided through the air on white parachutes.

The aromatic grasses were thick with animal life. He hesitated before taking the plunge.

Imagine attending a banquet with table after table of delicacies, all of it prepared in advance, all of it free of charge, nutritious and life-giving. A bird has few vices. He only eats his fill, but on this occasion he gorged himself. He had earned this day. He thought of his noisy babies and the weeks of shuttling to and from the nest with worms and bugs and berries. His offspring would have enjoyed this paradise, ungrateful though they tended to be. He consumed toasty beetles, crunchy crickets and purple-red berries cooked in the sun so that the centers were like jam. The most expensive and exquisite wines could not compare to this.

The sky had never been such a brilliant blue. His purpose had never been so clear. He continued to forage through the grasses, now out of interest only, reading them as if they were an absorbing book.

A few solitary old trees stood in the meadow, distant from each other. The catbird headed for the shade of a sassafras tree and rested. He saw a nest with bright blue eggs, but it would be cruel to steal on a day like today. He contemplated the scene before him as the golden light of late afternoon illuminated the meadow. Then he closed his deep, black eyes. His breast heaved up and down, the only sign that he was still alive after so much happiness.

He woke with a startled thought. He called out, but his mate did not respond. A summer meadow is a moment in time. It will not last. The bird understood. A bird never worries about the future or the past.  He took wing above the humming hills, inspired by the transience of all things, even the most beautiful.

On those exhausting days when it would seem that he could never do enough for those gaping mouths, when the chicks rested in a nest woven with a few souvenirs of his special trip, he would remember sailing above that blissful sea and the messages of endless providence it had foretold. That day would not be the last day, but it had been the best day to sing.

— Comments —

S.K. Orr writes:

Thank you for this. It’s the sort of writing that makes me just sit and stare off into space, grateful that someone else thinks thoughts similar to mine. Beautiful, beautiful.

Johanna writes:

A lovely essay, Laura. Thank you. I’m glad you identified the bird. I spied and looked up my first Catbird the other day. I confess to a feeling of impending doom, no doubt because of our present times but also because I know how precarious birds’ lives are. Thank you for the happy ending!

July 12, 2021

A Reader writes:

I’ve read your blog for years but never felt the need to comment til now. Your ‘Bird’s Vacation’ was great and reminded me of Franklin Russell, the Canadian nature writer. I hope you know him. If not, start with the same book I started with, Argen the Gull. I’ll quote from my own review on Goodreads:

“My favorite ‘wild animal story.’ No human elements whatsoever, not even evidence of humans, such as garbage or plastic detritus on the shore. Russell’s style is so clear and stark that it might not be style at all, just pure expression. Argen is a gull, not a character. Whether he’s cannibalizing gull chicks or driven to go on a northern journey on which he sees killer whales, he’s a gull. No immoral or noble behavior, just gull behavior.”

Your ‘Bird’s Vacation’ was less severe but in the same spirit. Russell was prolific and I was excited to rescue just yesterday his book Searchers at the Gulf from a public library throwout. For some dumb reason most libraries classify his books as fiction. They clearly belong in the nonfiction section under a natural history Dewey number.

Laura writes:

Thank you for your kind appreciation.

I was not familiar with Russell, but I will follow your recommendation. It is refreshing to keep humans out of the picture sometimes. Other animals just aren’t as …. how can I put this nicely … as difficult.

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