It is a cold fall morning in November, in the distance the cooling towers of the Salem Nuclear Power Plant, fatherless golems standing in static despair.
The air is still, but electric, moisture rising slowly from the warm earth. Expecting a smorgasbord of insects to rush about trying to escape, hundreds of birds, rodents and maybe a few amphibians, wait in anticipation of the coming morning buffet. The insects on the other hand, are stretching and drying out their new wings, happily unaware of the waiting multivariate predators –preparing to snap them up, on what will probably be these insects first and last day.
Everything is slowly waking up, the trees turn their leaves towards the coming sun, the soil breathes its moisture away, the song birds, themselves hyper vigilant of the 2 humans sitting in camp chairs quietly in the middle of their field, intone a few notes of reconnection, but soon a chorus of echos bring them to a gay chorus. The breeze carefully softly lifts, the assembly of successional soybeans plants a protective barriers between the wetlands and the active farm fields.
Quietly as we observe this event, the sun removes the heavy darkness from our surroundings, mist and fog together dampening our clothing, as we wait anxiously for the possibility of the morning calls of a quail covey.
Sadly today none call out, their shrill calls heard only a few miles away, by another group of surveyors… oh well, perhaps next year.
© Copyright 2021 SRD