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| Snowy Egrets and gulls on Assateague |
Three lovely notes he whistled, too soft to be heard
If others sang; but others never sang
In the great beech-wood all that May and June.
No one saw him: I alone could hear him
Though many listened. Was it but four years
Ago? or five? He never came again.
Oftenest when I heard him I was alone,
Nor could I ever make another hear.
La-la-la! he called, seeming far-off—
As if a cock crowed past the edge of the world,
As if the bird or I were in a dream.
Yet that he travelled through the trees and sometimes
Neared me, was plain, though somehow distant still
He sounded. All the proof is—I told men
What I had heard.
I never knew a voice,
Man, beast, or bird, better than this. I told
The naturalists; but neither had they heard
Anything like the notes that did so haunt me,
I had them clear by heart and have them still.
Four years, or five, have made no difference. Then
As now that La-la-la! was bodiless sweet:
Sad more than joyful it was, if I must say
That it was one or other, but if sad
'Twas sad only with joy too, too far off
For me to taste it. But I cannot tell
If truly never anything but fair
The days were when he sang, as now they seem.
This surely I know, that I who listened then,
Happy sometimes, sometimes suffering
A heavy body and a heavy heart,
Now straightway, if I think of it, become
Light as that bird wandering beyond my shore.
HT:
Poetry Foundation
Fire in the Window
It turns out they are the oldest church building on the island, dating back to the 1700s, although the church was originally Baptist, then Methodist. It's only been Catholic since the 1970s - before they got a building, they had Mass at the movie theater!
More stuff I forgot to mention:
It was particularly interesting to see the whale vertebrae, turtle scutes, and dolphin jaw since we have fossils of these at home.
I'm not sure if it was because we were near the tip of the island, next to the part which was closed to protect the nesting sites, but we saw swarms of tiny crustaceans which we call sand fleas.
Today we climbed the old Assateague lighthouse.
Besides which, Klenda and I got to sing the sea shanty about the lighthouse keeper and his mermaid wife as we climbed down.
I think, with the echoing tower and Klenda's harmonizing, we sounded rather good!
Except it wasn't the giant flipper of a whale, it was the giant edge of a giant ray!
The only other time we had been to Chincoteague, we had missed out on hiking their nature trails. I was determined not to miss out this time, and all the kids were game, so I decided to start with the 1 1/2 mile (2km) Woodland Trail.
After we'd recovered, we went off for our annual candy store trip.
After dinner we took another kayaking trip (if the cove across the street can be called a trip).
This year we went to Chincoteague Island, to a house tucked away in a quiet cove full of pine trees and salt marsh grass.
It's a wonderfully quirky house with lots of room and a nice big kitchen, but it's real claim to fame is in the garage...
It has wonderful beaches with great waves to play in!
