This morning I am starting my day on our screen porch. I came out to enjoy the first cool morning of the Fall. I am glad that the mornings are no longer hot and humid. This time of year the mornings can be fantastic. I sit at the family table with the lights out and wait in the silence that is only broken by the water from last night’s rain dripping from the trees.
It’s good to start my days out in the woods when I can. But when I am pressed for time or have appointments to keep – or as Robert Frost put it, “miles to go before I sleep” – going out on my screen porch in the early morning is fine.
I sit quietly in one of the chairs around the table and wait for the morning to surprise me. I hear an owl deep in the woods calling. And I hear an answering call. There’s a strange comfort in their calls. From down the road I hear the barking call of a fox. It is prowling the pre-dawn neighborhood looking for careless rodents. Then I hear it closer, and I stand up slowly and see not one but three foxes, a vixen and two near-grown pups, standing at the edge of the street. They are lit by the distant street lamp. Their silvery red coats, wet by the rain, glisten. One of the pups sees me stand up and turns and looks in my direction. Even though I am in deep shadow I know he can see me – sense me – as an unwelcome presence on their morning hunt. Then all three turn and dash down the street towards the woods to the east. I imagine I will see them again on some other morning as I am sure they have a den nearby.
There is a little light in the sky now and the crows in the woods have begun their morning caw. Their brazen call reverberates through the woods behind the house. They are alarmed. They probably see the owl or the fox, both enemies of the crows. Their calls move from the woods and over the house as the gang lifts out of the trees and is now circling the houses in the neighborhood cawing and cawing to bother and chase off the intruder. They fly off to the west, perhaps in search of another enemy.
Now with more light, and the wake-up call from the crows, other birds are singing out. The cardinals with their varied calls surround the house. They call from the holly trees where they eat from the now red-berried branches that have fruited for the Fall. I cannot see the cardinals in the still dim light. But I can picture the male’s crimson feathers and the crest that they each carry and their distinctive orange beaks. They have become year-round guests for us, always somewhere on the edge of the property singing their songs.
Soon the day will be into the near-full light of the time just before the sun breaks through the woods across the street. And it’s time to get to work on the efforts and rewards that are calling me from my reprieve on the porch. And I know that on some another morning, when I am pressed, I can come out and embrace the day.