Before Anna left for the summer to
paddle the mighty Coulonge River in Quebec, I asked her to draw four
of our favorite birds for me. I had recorded their songs with my
i-thing because their songs are so distinctive, and I want to be able
to offer a picture of them without infringing on anyone's copyright.
She sat on the tall chairs at the
island in the kitchen, bird books spread before her, intent on her
work. Before my eyes, this mascara-wearing attentively-dressed
teenage athlete shrank down to the little blonde tomboy with bangs
and braids who used to sit at the counter in her plaid shirt and
cargo shorts, drawing birds with the same consummate intensity. Anna
drew birds pretty much from the start. When she was in Kindergarten,
she would invite her best friend over, and I'd find them sitting at
the kitchen counter playing games with the bird book: sometimes it
was flipping through it randomly and trying to name the birds they
opened to, often it was drawing birds side-by-side. On the walls of
our rather grown-up looking dining room are two
bird portraits done by Anna when she was age 7 or 8: a downy
woodpecker, and a peacock. On my desk in my shed is a cigar
box painted with a sandhill crane. Her “special box” in the
basement, the place where each child keeps the mementos of their
childhood, is filled with bird drawings.
bird portraits done by Anna when she was age 7 or 8: a downy
woodpecker, and a peacock. On my desk in my shed is a cigar
box painted with a sandhill crane. Her “special box” in the
basement, the place where each child keeps the mementos of their
childhood, is filled with bird drawings.
She's fledging now. At Wabun, her
first two years of canoe trips were loops, always returning to the
base. This year is a long river trip – they go straight out to
journey the length of the Coulonge and challenge themselves with the
whitewater and wilderness that come with it. Her one letter that
made it here before they left post offices and cell phone towers
behind was filled with exclamation points. Her wings are strong;
she's off.
And here at home, the phoebe and the
black-throated green warbler, the ovenbird and the common
yellowthroat are still singing, but not like they were. These are the
mornings of crows and the song sparrows. The song sparrows have
nested nearby, and when I am in the garden they sing as if to warn of
my presence. The crows are also a family now; the young follow the
adults, begging for food, cawing in their plaintive nasal voice. In
the recording, you can hear them behind the very assertive call of
the adult. These are the birds that wake me before dawn.
By the time Anna returns, the young
crows will no longer be dependent. Who will sing in the morning?
Maybe it will be quiet – or maybe there will be another shift: soon
it will be the time of the late summer crickets and cicadas invisibly
buzzing, whirring and droning from the meadow. And Anna will ask,
“Can I drive?”