Out in the forest, sitting on a stump, waiting for the sun to continue setting behind the hill in front of me. It’s a familiar position this time of year. It’s a nice place to wait for all kinds of things to happen. One never knows what might occur.
As I turn my head a bit to look over my left shoulder, I see that I have a friend watching me. The almost full moon is rising over the hill behind me. It’s already so large, just 3 days before complete fullness, that the sight is transformative. The beauty is almost overwhelming. Between the sun setting in front of me and the moon rising behind me, there is so much reflected light that no stars are yet visible.
The normal sounds of the forest belie the idea of a “quiet nature”. I can clearly hear a tiny stream trickling toward a much larger stream on the valley floor below me. There is a symphony of birds in these woods and the calls of many are easily heard. The “dee-dee-dee” of the chickadee (one of my favorites), the nasal honk of migrating geese, the raucousness of crows, and the “grock” and “clicks” of the ravens are all music to my ears. Even the breeze rustles the leaves on the ground and slightly moves the tallest, lightest branches as it makes the evergreens “sigh”.
As I look off far away to my right, I can see headlights on the road some distance away through the trees bare of their leaves. Sometimes I can even hear the whine of truck tires filtering through as people speed away from the area of these woods. The passive drivers and passengers likely have no idea what is happening in the forest around them. But I know. That’s why I sit here.