TWO HUNDRED feet nor'west of the house stands a regular old grandfather hickory tree. It is dying on its roots and no longer yields the bushels of nuts (unhusked) which we gathered in past autumns beneath its broad horizontal limbs. Soil is thin on these hills and the noble old tree's roots have traveled far in the struggle to keep life in its majestic body. Here is illustrated the hardest test we are called upon to face — watching a loved thing die without power to stop or ease the going.
Even after leaves no longer emerald the dark gray branches I shall let it stand because the WOOD THRUSHES call up the dawn and requiem the evenings from its top.
Yesterday was my birthday (July 31, 1928) and altho the Veeries took no note of that important (?) fact, the Wood Thrushes gave a recital as usual. The day was cool with a northwest wind parading fluffy cloud children in stately clippership procession across the blue. Toward evening they faded into the southeast, their crests tipped with orange from sun slants beyond the intervening hills. A full moon rolled along the southern mountain scroll and from the hickory, against a pale amber-tinted west, a Wood Thrush sang — peace, peace and f-o-r-get! I dreamt once that the souls of uncounted dead swept along these hills in a tremendous column of hooded figures. If living souls could pass in review like that army of sheeted ghosts before this tawny coated High Priest singing in the fading light, War would be no more. There could be no other than peaceful thots in hearts of those who pass before this trinity of Sky and Wood and Bird.
Eastern North America. Breeds in Transition and Austral zones from southern South Dakota, central Minnesota, central Wisconsin, southern Ontario and Southern New Hampshire south to eastern Texas, Louisiana and Northern Florida. Winters south of United States.