This was originally written last August before the flood devastated our mountain top and took precedence over everything else. People are still out of their homes, some for good. Prattsville is struggling to survive. Some believe it will. Some don't. The homeless are a topic of conversation now that winter is for sure here. One woman's reaction? "Let them live in tents."
Outside my office window, the first snowfall -- heavy and wet -- is blinding white in the afternoon sun. I think I'll send this now.
Our old farmhouse has a huge wrap-around screen porch that separates us from the insects but not the sounds and sights of the valley. I sit there every morning I can with my first coffee of the day (laced with a spoonful of hot chocolate and too much sugar) and gradually reach lift-off. The other day I heard a sound I should not have heard this time of year, barely into August. Blue jays! They’re at least a month early – a cold weather bird – but they were out there shrieking to mar the peace of that morning. But why are they here now, and why are the seedpod propellers dry and ready to fall from the maples, and why am I beginning to see red and copper leaves already in grass that’s still tall and green? Just askin’…
I live where there is peace, yes, but very little silence. Only after a three day blizzard when the river is frozen and covered over with five feet of snow is there quiet – shh, the whole world white and still. When I’m in the city sounds tend to muddy together like a child’s fingerprint painting with too many colors. So many sounds out here, too, but they seem distinct to me. Like a medieval book of hours different sounds at different times help define the day. Each waking thing makes a sound. Each waking thing joins the world at its appointed time. Human sounds are the ones least heard, such as the occasional car or truck that passes our place. Like the residents of wartime London who could tell the type of plane flying over by the sound of its engines, I can tell which neighbor is driving by the house without looking. Max always honks, but still I know him by the squeaks and rattles of the tow-trailer behind his Dodge truck. I can tell who’s brush-hogging their field, who’s using the chainsaw, who’s building a new shed, who’s sighting in for hunting season. You get to know the valley’s dogs, too, especially at night when a bear walks across their property or the coyotes yip and howl, but the sound of an owl at sunset is the sound I treasure most.
I have a secret place. It’s on the mountain behind my house, an old stone wall in the woods, once a field, now second growth timber. I wander up there often and sit, look out over the valley and smile because no one knows where I am. Last Spring I sat there at dusk and heard an owl call from across the valley – hoo, hoo – haunting – and another owl from the woods somewhere around me called back. I don’t know what they were saying but they said it a lot, back and forth, their calls echoing across the valley. The river was too far down the mountain to hear, and the woods were as quiet as always when night comes on. But the owls were calling. And then they weren’t. I waited until I was satisfied that they had gone somewhere else, and then I walked home in the darkness, the only sound being that of my boots as they pushed aside the dry grass.
