I came across this Chinese proverb today: "A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song."

It doesn't seem real relevant to my problems of frying driers, unhappy automobiles, and the seemingly endless amount of time my house has been on the market. But, still, it reminded me that the efforts that I put forth, into anything I do, may still have value even if they don't solve all my problems. It reminded me that I can't just give up on everything just because some things....okay, a whole lot of things, are really messed up. I've still got my song, even if it's not an answer....like bird song, it may make somebody else happy to hear it.

Then, when I went out to pick up some supper....

there was a whole flock of robins on the parking lot! These are the first ones I've seen this year - a sure sign of spring. Some of them even looked surprisingly plump and hearty: maybe global warming isn't bad for everyone. Most years when they come back they're so thin and pale you have to look real closely to see what they are. But these guys were bright, loud and proud, hopping up on bare tree branches and singing their distinctive song.

I was so happy to see them that they put me off the liberal political rant I was going over in my head ( maybe you'll get that tomorrow. Stay tuned)

The Hub says we should leave a note in chicken scratch for Birda, the robin who nested last year in our car port: "Birda, fly east .75 miles and look for our cars. Plenty of trees in area, close to muddy field. Limited grubs, but awesome earthworm supply. Two porches available, or can provide box. Bring Cyrano and the kids. Hope to see you there."

Of course, you can't communicate with birds, and she'd probably decide to take her chances with the new home owners, whoever they will be. After all, you have to be a mighty hard hearted person to take down a birds nest when there's a bird in it.

I hope we have a lot of birds and other semi-wildlife at the new house this year. Maybe then I won't miss my little eco-oasis on Main St. so much.

It's funny what people consider "pleasant" as surroundings. For instance, my dad who grew up in Western Maryland ( that's practically West Virginia - you know, "wild, weird, and wonderful" or something like that) has to have some space around him. I mean he really HAS to - it isn't optional. The thought of houses being built in the field that has always been directly across from the house where I am living now was what made him think of going to PA to build on to my brother's house. My brother's house is also in a suburban neighborhood, but with sweeping views and you can see the foot hills of the mountains where he grew up from there.

The house we lived in when I was a kid, in The Land That Time Forgot was in this little forgotten patch of rural-ness right below the County Line. It was like after Reisterstown, you fell off the face of civilized earth or something and re-emerged into a land where both virulent racism and a general store with penny candy were still intact. There was a large semi-working farm across the road from our house, and fields behind us all the way back to the Suburban propane storage facility, which eventually blew up as those things are liable to do. I treasure my memories of walking over those fields, and through the little woods that surrounded the place. I'm most deeply grateful for the knowledge of the way in which the natural world works that I gained in these surroundings, and was often calmed in stressful circumstances by running off to some leafy glade: a different reality from grey and geometrical school life.

But the loneliness that drove me to walk over fields and hardly marked trails for often as far as I could go colored my view of such landscapes. To me, fallow fields are desolate places. The wind rushing through the trees sounds like my old crying jags rather than a gentle sigh. A magnificent tree in the midst of fruitful field is as much a symbol of loneliness to me as a thing of beauty. It endures, it raises it's arms to the heavens, it shelters and nourishes and shades as best it can, but it is the last of it's kind. It's companions have all gone and only it remains by some strange luck - a stronger root system, the nearby presence of a great rock, it's sheer size, or the exhaustion that day of the men who came to clear the field. And, if it had a consciousness, it would know that if it's children survived it was only in some far flung place. It would know that when it was gone there would not be another tree to replace it. It would know its fate was to do the best it could in it's new world where tree-ness had failed and field-ness ruled. When I was really young, and first started to go walking, I used to talk to such trees, and, at least they didn't answer me that I was foolish and ought to be doing something else.

So, I'll probably be the only person in the neighborhood who won't be sorry to see homes instead of rolling fields when the place finally is developed. I've been that way every place I've ever lived. I've wanted to have people around me. I'm not very social. I'm not given to sitting out front and talking to the neighbors for long periods of time. But the more rural places I have lived have seemed very closed to me. The Fairy Land house was like that. We had neighbors, but mostly wind and sweeping views. We had neighbors, but we never saw them. It was a cold neighborhood, of people who pulled in, clicked down the garage door and were swallowed by houses that got larger as the street got longer. People used to come visit our shaky, probably-haunted house and say "you have a beautiful piece of property here". I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I supposed, at the time, it was because it had been The Hub's house with Angie, though she had not lived there long. But now I know it was the endless wind, the far going fields, the broken down tractors and County faces that were both sharp and closed at the same time.

I felt like I was in Wuthering Heights, and not in a good way. ( Am I the only person who was HORRIFIED by Heathcliff, who DID NOT think he was a great romantic hero and spent the entire book thinking "This guy is a psychopath who ought to be in jail, or maybe there's now a medication for this" ?)

I could live in the woods. I could have wildlife for neighbors. That would be no problem. Woods are active, cheerful places. There's a lot going on. If you doubt me, go out when it gets warmer and see. You have to be a little quiet though, to see what I mean - you won't hear or see anything if you go stomping through. But hell, if you had chipmunks you'd never watch television, for example. Those things are a reality show in and of themselves.

If I can't live in the woods, then I'd rather live in the land of sidewalks. Cheerful suburbs or in town where there is foot traffic, where there are other people's children playing ball and coming over to pet the dog. Where there is someone for whom to plant the front with flowers - neighbors across the street to enjoy them. Birds on feeders, cats on cars, grandmothers reading books on porches. A place where, if you die and you don't come out of your house for a couple of days someone will come look for you, not just think, "hunh. nona-my-business. Not my problem".

So, again I'm a minority. Everybody else wants great swaths of land around them, wearying driveways at the ends of which they can pretend they're alone in the world. Privacy fences.

Maybe that's why I like birds so much. They ignore all the barriers people put all over the place and keep on singing.