Thursday, September 01, 2005

Porch Wren

I was sitting on the porch of a friend's place up in Shady Valley, Tennessee. Shady is a quiet, broad, shallow valley that is symbolic of the southern mountains. You drive into it from either Bristol or Elizabethton and in a magic moment the view opens up in a panorama not found in much of the world.

I was enjoying the morning's coffee and waking up of the woods around the pond. The porch runs long-ways to the house and next to me are double front doors and next to them, an old deck broom hangs from the wall. The house wrens have made a home using the brush of the broom as their floor and the soffit of the house as the roof. Not paying too much attention to the wrens, they rush around the house and the yard and the pond and after a while my attention drifts elsewhere, I fail to notice one hopping along the edge of the porch towards me. I sat with my legs crossed, ankle on a knee, and between my legs I finally notice a wren on the deck staring back up at me. In a moment she/he hops up on my tennis shoe, flirts for a moment looking right and left and, then, departs.

The whole thing encounter takes ten seconds.
#####