Often in the warm last week of October, I sat in the backyard and looked up at the round, clear sky through the opening in my plantings and trees.
I had just returned from a trip to my nephew's wedding in Lincoln, Nebraska. I had driven 1,600 miles across great, beige plains shorn of their corn and soybeans, and under chilly sun, and big sky, and in steady, hard wind.
It was good to be home in the Ohio Valley. I was tired, and I rested next to the last purple asters in the garden.
Here the sky was contained, a porthole through the suburban landscape. I had seen few birds on my four-day trip, but sitting in the yard, I could watch a vulture watching me, sailing in and out of my view. Small birds passed above me, so high that I had trouble seeing their silhouettes.
They appeared alone or in widely separated pairs or in clusters of maybe half a dozen. They might have been swallows hunting insects, but I couldn't be sure.
Framed by my location and limited perspective, the birds seemed mine. No longer lost in the infinite horizon of Iowa and Nebraska, they and I belonged here.
This glimpse of natural history through a tiny looking glass of small sky was more revealing than the vast options of outer space beyond my yard.
Here I could see enough.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the third week off Late Fall. In the meantime, relax and look up at the sky. It's all yours.
Poor Will's Almanack for 2023 as well as my new book of essays, The Virgin Point: Meditations in Nature, are now, available on Amazon or from www.poorwillsalmanack.com.
