Quiet

Roundtop has been quieter this week than I usually find it. The weather has been calm, if warmer than it should be, with no storms and little breeze to ruffle things. I’m sure the quietness is at least partly due to the fact that my morning walks are now made in near-complete darkness. The only real opportunity I have now to see what’s going on around me is in the evenings, when the day’s activities are already winding down.

Even with that as a backdrop, the woods seem unusually quiet to me. I haven’t seen or heard the foxes for almost two weeks. I haven’t startled any deer this week either. The summer’s resident birds are starting to leave, so the woods are quieter without their voices, though I have the sense that their absence isn’t the whole story. Some of the resident birds seem oddly absent, too.

All summer long Dog, Baby Dog and I have been accosted by the mockingbirds that haunted the bottom of my lane. They have been strangely absent this week, even in the evenings. As mockingbirds are year long residents, they should not be suddenly absent. So where are they?

Is this quiet a real mystery or just an accident of the times I am out in the woods during the week? Today, I cannot say but I hope the weekend will bring a few answers.