Arboretum Diary

"Butterflies and butterflies, (taking the place of the bumble-bees of three months since, who have quite disappear'd,) continue to flit and fro, all sorts, white, yellow, brown, purple – now and then some gorgeous fellow flashing lazily by on wings like artists' palettes dabb'd with every color." – Whitman, from Specimen Days







5/10

Fairly early by morning, 8:00, the turkeys out carousing Arboretum drive, their green felt like feathers nearly twinkling by an unexpected morning sunshine.  Deeper in, thrushes and oven birds, the blue jays off in the May-crowding oak canopy setting off the alarm of the woods by the false tune of a roving hawk – all the songs, squeaks, twinklings and drawn strumming can't be seen but fill the Wingra Marsh as if by a master cue.  Over the railing of the lookout at ancient open springs I see the clover fill in like a green beard over the planted rocks.  Here is the lushest, the brightest, most mesmerizing of woods in the Arboretum, where the unexplainable happens, bubbles rise up from the sheer guts of the mantle under our feet and seep out under the crawling roots of the grandmother oak. Every little bird haunts here at the underbrush staking out a small claim of the crossing water spider and the wiggling worm, as if a little path of oxygen that breathes out into the open lung of the pond and slows again to the deep world nobody sees.