Tunnel of Love
Mary and I walk into the wood.
“Listen,” she says.
I don’t. Listen. At least not often in the way she’s asking, where you have to stop everything and just be.
“I bet that there would be a lot more in the mornings,” she adds.
We’ve decided to go somewhere quiet. Fowl Meadow. Near Blue Hill in Milton. On a beautiful Sunday in April, temperatures in the upper fifties. A walk in the wood with the dog and binoculars.
“I’ll be going slow,” Mary says. “And you’re going to have to be patient.”
I’m not. Patient. Not usually, but today’s different. After two days up late. Here on a lazy Sunday. The need for the three of us to be together.
“She looks good,” I say of the dog whose leg we’ve been concerned about.
“We may have to leash her,” Mary says. “If she starts chasing.”
“She’ll be fine,” I respond, still not listening. “There’s nobody here,”
“They’re nesting, so people will yell at us Lola is rummaging around.”
There are a few cars in the lot, a family setting out just ahead of us. We can see that they’ve leashed their dogs making me think that maybe this place is different, this long wood running along the Neponset River. Reminds me of somewhere else, far from here.
“What do you mean?” Mary asks.
“I don’t know, but you don’t find long straight paths like this in New England,” I say. “Feels more like Europe.”
We enter and I’m struck by all the trash, but maybe that’s a function of early spring, of recently melted snow cover. Still, I’d just been talking about the sixties campaign to rid New York of litter. This day reminding me that the work is never done.
“Can you tell who it is?” Mary asks looking up. “There!”
I can’t, though this walk would be like no other, not for the number seen, nor for any particular one, but because of the stereophonic nature of the place. We move through a perfectly straight single-track path, trees on each side, branches with light green buds in burgeoning statement. This place part wood, part marsh, all quiet.
“This all must get flooded at times,” I say, imagining that the river rises now and again.
“There’s been a bit of a drought this year,” Mary says, though there’s plenty of standing water along marshy areas. Blades of bright green grass lifting our spirits like little clumps of hope that presage the coming season.
“We had it easy this winter,” I say, thinking back on the last particularly timid couple of months.
“March no lion,” Mary says back, to which I agree. Winter mostly warm with few blizzards, really only one or two. Mary and I able to swim each month on days when temps rise into the sixties,— crazy in and of itself. Water ice cold, but bliss once we stand back up into the warm sun.
“What’s that?” she asks, and I listen carefully. The constant ringing in my ears fades back into the expanse that makes up this place. “Cardinal or maybe Carolina Wren?”
I can hear a number of birds all at once, some familiar, some less so. You rarely actually see the birds which makes this game all that much harder. Instead, we have to identify them from their call or song.
“Most have lots of different calls,” Mary reminds me, making this activity all that much harder. Leveling up not as straightforward as Duolingo, the language app we’re using to learn French. I know more calls that most — remember my mom’s love of a robin’s song as she tried to get us to pay more attention, to birds, to the world around us.
“Slow down,” she would say, most of my teachers in violent agreement.
My heart’s beating comfortably today, not too fast, the stress of the city as far away as its constant low hum now off in the distance.
“I’m amazed that we’re OK in that,” Mary says of the noise. It sounds like a dark cloud that hangs over the city.
“Maybe in the near future your watch will measure the din the way it measures the day’s temperature,” I propose. “Warn us with levels are unhealthy.”
I worry that it would sound off perpetually, adding to the problem. Perhaps a haptic notification instead.
“That might be a pileated.” Mary says, turning back to investigate.
“Wouldn’t that be great,” she says of the distinctive knocking. “Maybe we can spot him. They each have different drums. Downy. Red bellied. Pileated.”
There have been a number of woodpeckers at it near our house, the birds and the bugs finally out, temperatures now reliably above freezing. I counted three the other morning as I ran around the block during my morning ritual.
“There’s a grackle,” Mary says, spotting a bird just up above us. “The Elvis of the forest with its color and iridescence. See the v-shaped tail when it flies?”
We’ve heard and seen nearly a dozen birds today. Mary counting them out, recording them in her journal.
“Gas hawk!” I’d add, pointing up a jet taking off from a now distant Logan Airport. Doesn’t count, but fun to say.
“And what’s that?” I say, not pointing at an actual bird in flight. “There, it’s got some white.”
“Maybe a hawk, or a flicker,” she says. “Did it fly up and down, or soar?” the question.
“It flew,” my idiot answer.
“I think it’s a Northern Harrier,” Mary concludes.
We walk a few miles today, along a straight and worn path that comes upon the river. Not a huge flow, instead quiet enough for Lola to dip up to her waist in light current, cooling off as we watch tiny waves reflect off fallen trees.
“Beavers,” we both notice. “though there’s no damn.”
Mary points out that ripples can move upstream against the current. “We learned that in physics.”
“You know a lot,” I say, often.
“I paid attention, and studied, a lot,” she says.
I didn’t, and didn’t.
What a day. The sounds of a wood. Few people to disturb. Birds that color. We walk in and then back out, the calm of nature soothing and restoring our frazzled souls.
“That’s just what I needed,” Mary concludes as we hop back in the van. “Time with nature, with my birds, and with you.”
Me too!
(Birds in the wood: Common Grackle, Northern Harrier, Downey & Red Bellied Woodpecker, Flicker, Robin, Mallard pair, Carolina Wren, Red Wing Blackbird, Goldfinch, Chickadee, Gull SP, Cardinal, Song Sparrow, Eastern Towee)
