Smells like freedom

Wood thrush, singing

I started the day tipping my head back and straining to see a tiny blue Northern Parula high atop a sycamore tree, and I ended it down on my knees as I bent to attach blue masking tape to the baseboards in the bedroom I'm getting ready to paint. In between those events, I just kept busy doing the sorts of chores that get postponed amongst the demands of finals and grading. Today I worked every muscle in my body harder than I have in weeks, so why do I feel so relaxed?

No papers, no meetings, no assessment reports or plagiarism cases--and until just now, no Internet access. I have one more set of meetings on Friday followed by Commencement on Sunday, but then I'm free to look at birds and paint bedrooms and crank up all the writing and research projects I've been avoiding. Summer is so close I can smell it! Smells like iced tea, honeysuckle, and freedom.

I smelled it this morning in the woods with my birding-and-botanizing buddy. We both ended up with sore necks from craning toward the treetops to observe the warblers,  and we didn't do much talking except for "Look, fiddleheads," or "look, butterfly" or "look, towhee." A wood thrush, often heard but rarely seen, perched on a branch before us and sang its little heart out in a series of ringing musical phrases, and we kept being called back to the woods by the calls Kentucky warblers that we never managed to see amidst the leaves. 

Red-eyed vireo

"You know they're just playing with us," I said. "They're keeping a tally of how many times they can make us turn around and come back." 

After the kind of semester we've had, though, that's the kind of game we're happy to play.