I love, love, love the vivid descriptions of the juvenile birds! The sound of your voice telling those tale made me smile and laugh as I could immediately envision them. It brought me joy 😊
Chloe, I love the way your mind works and the special gift you have to articulate it so clearly, seamlessly and wisely. You give me oause, and allow me to think of things I never thought of.
Chloe, I admire so much the way you are able to close the gap between the two topics of death and birds. Your fourth paragraph is such a smooth transition. I also find it remarkable how you can clearly talk about death for three paragraphs without ever mentioning death. Your description of baby birds is delightful. Thank you for excellence. I always read your posts first.
Chloe, your writing and your performance of that writing never disappoints. This is such a thoughtful exploration of the dread we all feel like the hum of a refrigerator or furnace in the background of our days. Nature is the only thing I've found to consistently quiet this feeling. I try not to think about it going away even as I know much of it is disappearing either directly or indirectly because of us.
I've recently lost my little writing sanctuary here in the city park. They've ripped out all the wild trees and underbrush to make way for a broad paved biking trail and grassy lawn with manicured trees. It's progress. I know it will make it more accessible, but I mourn the little bit of wilderness where owls could still hunt.
Ben, thank you, that means an awful lot, particularly from you (I aspire to your level of performance!). Your refrigerator hum analogy is so perfect. I wonder about all the psychic energy it’s draining without us noticing.
I am so, so sorry to hear about your sanctuary, it made my stomach flip reading about the shift toward the manicured. Nature, but not as we know it. ❤️
I know this dread, Chloe, and 3 a.m. is its witching hour. Your post turned from that to the idea of extinction, and there is a terrible loneliness embodied in both. Speaking about it is brave, and powerful. 🕊️
Oh, thank you for sharing that. That sense of loneliness is so powerful, it’s been taking my breath away recently. Thank you, love. I hope yours eases 💜
Chloe, you have once more captured the beauty and the dread , within and around us. I feel it as you write it. I truly fell in love with birds in the midst of lockdown as the world quietened down and I noticed them more than ever before. I loved learning about the different tendencies and temperaments you have witnessed in your work.💚
Mya, thank you for your kind words. Lockdown seemed to allow quite a few people to slow down enough to attend to the birds and fall in love with them, it’s interesting to see such a clear correlation between our typically rushed lives and our missing of such simple, yet profound, beauty. I wonder, do you subscribe to Shriek of the Week? Charlie chooses a different bird each post and plays their song and speaks to their ways and personalities, I think you’d enjoy it 💜
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I could read you every morning and feel right in the world. I also awaken in the dark, only it is my scream that wakes me. I believe in the collective consciousness. That is what I think is waking us. All my life has been about fighting the progress of humans. Now that I am an elder I am letting go of the fight. I think I am doing an okay job of it but the waking tells me not so much. Sitting in the woods and letting them wash over me heals the waking nightmare. I am reconciled to our fate after all we chose it. I ask the forest, wildness to forgive me and it heals me. I wish I could see it before we got here and after we are gone. It must be glorious!!!!
Heather, thank you so much. I think the collective consciousness is a powerful thing, and something we’d probably all do well to consider a little more than we typically do. I’m glad to hear that the forest offers you comfort. I also think about the time before, and after, and agree--it must have been glorious.
I’m reading this in the dread-tide time, the ‘wolf hour’. The way you draw these experiences together, the mismatched weights of planetary loss and individual fledglings, is extraordinarily moving. Thank you. 🌊
Inspiring and such beautiful writing! I Know the names of birds only in Farsi...I have been looking up each one of them and yours description are magical. Thank you
Kabir! I would LOVE to know the names of some Birds in Farsi! Let’s do a swap some time? I love that you took the time to look them up, that makes me so happy. Thank you, love.
One small reason I love your work, besides it being incredibly great, is that I volunteered at a wildlife sanctuary rehabilitating injured birds for a summer after college, so it brings back some memories of the bird personalities. I'm still pretty sure magpies are smarter than people.
Miter, how wonderful! I love that you had the opportunity to do that. Did you ever get the chance to feed baby Magpies? Or baby Crows? The noises they both make when they’re feeding are some of my favourite sounds in the world. And I totally agree, re Magpies being smarter than people.
I don't think any baby magpies or crows. But, there was a group of magpies that seemed like adolescents and they would jump in and out of their cages so I wouldnt know who was who and had to feed them more. I think all the birds got monkey chow. I remember finches, swallows, grackles and jays. And some very cute baby racoons.
Adolescent Magpie's are a lot of fun, such characters. I had to google Grackles! We don't have them here, they're gorgeous! Pretty jealous that you got to hang out with baby racoons, we don't have them, either. But, baby badgers are very sweet...
Yes, Grackles are pretty and shiny. But, I remember them being the biggest jerks and difficult to feed! Baby racoons are cute but I bet baby badgers eat less trash and have less rabies...actually, I don't know much about badgers besides "honey badger don't care" and "we don't need no stinkin' badgers". And "Wisconsin."
Grackles are jerks *makes mental note*, good to know. Baby badgers aren’t known for trash and rabies. I forget that American badgers are quite different to UK badgers, ours are like characters from a kids book (if the books included them murdering hedgehogs, which it might not). They’re extremely cute, but they sometimes dig up graves and kick the bones out to makes sets, so, they also kinda choose anarchy! It’s hard to keep up…
If only all the world could hear your voice and read your words, for then there would be more hope for humanity and a change of its course away from destruction, dread and greed.
As always, I pause and think and ponder upon reading and listening to your post, Chloe. That location and canoeing in Brecon looks so peaceful. The descriptions of the birds brought a smile to my face. Your thoughts on that 3am dread are so well articulated. "This earthen cocoon feels sentient." is a remarkable line.
Nathan, what a kind thing to say, thank you so much, love. 🤗 Canoeing was a much needed soul tonic, it was amazingly quiet. I feel I should qualify that David was at the back and did the vast majority of the rowing, like a champ. I’m glad the birds made you smile, I enjoyed writing that. As always, thanks so much for casting your eye over 💗
I feel this way about my cats. I have 4. 2 love each other, one doesn't care about anyone but her own beauty, the fourth will fuck you up if you look at her sideways. And she attacks one particular cat who is harmless. And I think, why do you choose to be this way? You could be the other way, but you choose this. Birds and cats, hey?
Thank you so much for the kind words about my essay, Chloe. And as always, thanks for the reverence and honesty in your ideas and prose. I think I might gladly swap my dread for yours, which, despite your sense of malevolence, seems nonetheless to have a kind of healing awareness to it as well. I suppose that comes from within, of course, from your good sense of yourself and place in the world. My own dread at 3AM is the usual and random mess of events and ideas and people battering my consciousness, all quite unmanageable. So my response is to envision myself walking on a specific trail that I know and love, almost step by step, into the Grand Canyon here in the U.S. Maybe my descending a mile into the earth, past millions of years of geological history, is similar to your earthen cocoon. Mine as well holds me so that I drift back to sleep.
Bryan, thank you so much for taking the time to read, and to comment. I’m sorry to hear of your dread, truly, and also a little intrigued by the fact that both our minds choose to take us deeper into the earth by way of solace… I so appreciate you sharing Fred Bodsworth’s book, I read the first chapter and, you’re right, it resonates with me very much. I’m glad that people are thinking to write in this way, and look forward to reading the rest. I’m behind, too. Something about this time of year sees my capacity lessening significantly, so I’m a little slow at the moment. Excited to read your latest though. Thank you, Bryan. Sending love.
What a glorious canal trip!! I hope that while there you were able to offer up the existential dread to nature. She’s amazingly good at taking it and letting it dissipate into millions of tiny atoms which get overwhelmed by the perfection of her beauty. Otherwise, feel free to send it up in the air and direct it towards Australia. It should be ‘plum tuckered out’ by the time it gets here. Grin. Take care dear soul. Sending heaps of love, hugs and best wishes. 🤗🤗😃😃😘😘🌼🌼
Beth! It was pretty special. I’m trying to offer it over, bit by bit. I so love the visual of her “taking it and letting it dissipate into millions of tiny atoms which get overwhelmed by the perfection of her beauty.” What a gift. 💗And, great idea re sending it all the way to Australia, it’d be exhausted!! 😄 Thank you so much for being here, Beth. You light up the place ♥️ Much love.
I’m delighted to have found you here. I love the attention to detail and your loving and humorous descriptions of the baby birds. To this, I couldn’t agree more: “And that’s exactly why my greatest hope is that we all, in whatever way we feel most moved to, find active ways to profess our love—for the natural world, for our brothers and sisters, human and otherwise.” Thank you. May it be so.
When my personal 3AM wins it’s because it convinces me I’m the Last Bengal Tiger, and I don’t even notice to challenge that. It’s not that I’ll cease to be but, worse, that I’m alone. Generally speaking, by 6AM I can see the absurdity in that, but woe is 3:45, 4:15, 5:22…
There’s definitely a 3am voice that likes to lie and say that I am the only person in the world experiencing sleeplessness, turmoil, confusion and so on. The Birds kicking off around dawn is usually what brings me round. Think I might title my album ‘Woe is 3.45’.
I love, love, love the vivid descriptions of the juvenile birds! The sound of your voice telling those tale made me smile and laugh as I could immediately envision them. It brought me joy 😊
Chloe, I love the way your mind works and the special gift you have to articulate it so clearly, seamlessly and wisely. You give me oause, and allow me to think of things I never thought of.
Migration broke my heart.
My love, thank you for sharing about your smile and laughter, I saw and heard them in my minds eye and it brought me so much joy 💗
Thank you so much for reading, it means so much that you do x
Chloe, I admire so much the way you are able to close the gap between the two topics of death and birds. Your fourth paragraph is such a smooth transition. I also find it remarkable how you can clearly talk about death for three paragraphs without ever mentioning death. Your description of baby birds is delightful. Thank you for excellence. I always read your posts first.
Sharron, thank you so much for reading--and for noticing in the ways that you do. I delight in your eagle-eye. Thank you for being here.
Chloe, your writing and your performance of that writing never disappoints. This is such a thoughtful exploration of the dread we all feel like the hum of a refrigerator or furnace in the background of our days. Nature is the only thing I've found to consistently quiet this feeling. I try not to think about it going away even as I know much of it is disappearing either directly or indirectly because of us.
I've recently lost my little writing sanctuary here in the city park. They've ripped out all the wild trees and underbrush to make way for a broad paved biking trail and grassy lawn with manicured trees. It's progress. I know it will make it more accessible, but I mourn the little bit of wilderness where owls could still hunt.
Ben, thank you, that means an awful lot, particularly from you (I aspire to your level of performance!). Your refrigerator hum analogy is so perfect. I wonder about all the psychic energy it’s draining without us noticing.
I am so, so sorry to hear about your sanctuary, it made my stomach flip reading about the shift toward the manicured. Nature, but not as we know it. ❤️
I know this dread, Chloe, and 3 a.m. is its witching hour. Your post turned from that to the idea of extinction, and there is a terrible loneliness embodied in both. Speaking about it is brave, and powerful. 🕊️
Oh, thank you for sharing that. That sense of loneliness is so powerful, it’s been taking my breath away recently. Thank you, love. I hope yours eases 💜
Chloe, you have once more captured the beauty and the dread , within and around us. I feel it as you write it. I truly fell in love with birds in the midst of lockdown as the world quietened down and I noticed them more than ever before. I loved learning about the different tendencies and temperaments you have witnessed in your work.💚
Mya, thank you for your kind words. Lockdown seemed to allow quite a few people to slow down enough to attend to the birds and fall in love with them, it’s interesting to see such a clear correlation between our typically rushed lives and our missing of such simple, yet profound, beauty. I wonder, do you subscribe to Shriek of the Week? Charlie chooses a different bird each post and plays their song and speaks to their ways and personalities, I think you’d enjoy it 💜
Thank you, Chloe, I will now go and find Charlie's Shriek of the Week!💚
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I could read you every morning and feel right in the world. I also awaken in the dark, only it is my scream that wakes me. I believe in the collective consciousness. That is what I think is waking us. All my life has been about fighting the progress of humans. Now that I am an elder I am letting go of the fight. I think I am doing an okay job of it but the waking tells me not so much. Sitting in the woods and letting them wash over me heals the waking nightmare. I am reconciled to our fate after all we chose it. I ask the forest, wildness to forgive me and it heals me. I wish I could see it before we got here and after we are gone. It must be glorious!!!!
Heather, thank you so much. I think the collective consciousness is a powerful thing, and something we’d probably all do well to consider a little more than we typically do. I’m glad to hear that the forest offers you comfort. I also think about the time before, and after, and agree--it must have been glorious.
Beautiful, as always. I think you would enjoy this place. https://www.in-vendee.com/distinctive-landscapes/marais-poitevin-and-green-venice
Thank you so much, Lev, and oh my goodness, you think right! This looks a dream, have you been?
Yes, about nine years ago. We cycled and paddled gently round the canals and it was a fully peaceful time.
We're planning our trip. Thank you, Lev 💜
Thank you!
I’m reading this in the dread-tide time, the ‘wolf hour’. The way you draw these experiences together, the mismatched weights of planetary loss and individual fledglings, is extraordinarily moving. Thank you. 🌊
Charlie, bless you. I’m glad I could accompany your wolf hour. Thank you so much for reading ❤️🪶
Inspiring and such beautiful writing! I Know the names of birds only in Farsi...I have been looking up each one of them and yours description are magical. Thank you
Kabir! I would LOVE to know the names of some Birds in Farsi! Let’s do a swap some time? I love that you took the time to look them up, that makes me so happy. Thank you, love.
One small reason I love your work, besides it being incredibly great, is that I volunteered at a wildlife sanctuary rehabilitating injured birds for a summer after college, so it brings back some memories of the bird personalities. I'm still pretty sure magpies are smarter than people.
Miter, how wonderful! I love that you had the opportunity to do that. Did you ever get the chance to feed baby Magpies? Or baby Crows? The noises they both make when they’re feeding are some of my favourite sounds in the world. And I totally agree, re Magpies being smarter than people.
I don't think any baby magpies or crows. But, there was a group of magpies that seemed like adolescents and they would jump in and out of their cages so I wouldnt know who was who and had to feed them more. I think all the birds got monkey chow. I remember finches, swallows, grackles and jays. And some very cute baby racoons.
Adolescent Magpie's are a lot of fun, such characters. I had to google Grackles! We don't have them here, they're gorgeous! Pretty jealous that you got to hang out with baby racoons, we don't have them, either. But, baby badgers are very sweet...
Yes, Grackles are pretty and shiny. But, I remember them being the biggest jerks and difficult to feed! Baby racoons are cute but I bet baby badgers eat less trash and have less rabies...actually, I don't know much about badgers besides "honey badger don't care" and "we don't need no stinkin' badgers". And "Wisconsin."
Grackles are jerks *makes mental note*, good to know. Baby badgers aren’t known for trash and rabies. I forget that American badgers are quite different to UK badgers, ours are like characters from a kids book (if the books included them murdering hedgehogs, which it might not). They’re extremely cute, but they sometimes dig up graves and kick the bones out to makes sets, so, they also kinda choose anarchy! It’s hard to keep up…
Spent some time looking at baby euro badgers at it was well worth it. Cute little devils!
If only all the world could hear your voice and read your words, for then there would be more hope for humanity and a change of its course away from destruction, dread and greed.
As always, I pause and think and ponder upon reading and listening to your post, Chloe. That location and canoeing in Brecon looks so peaceful. The descriptions of the birds brought a smile to my face. Your thoughts on that 3am dread are so well articulated. "This earthen cocoon feels sentient." is a remarkable line.
Nathan, what a kind thing to say, thank you so much, love. 🤗 Canoeing was a much needed soul tonic, it was amazingly quiet. I feel I should qualify that David was at the back and did the vast majority of the rowing, like a champ. I’m glad the birds made you smile, I enjoyed writing that. As always, thanks so much for casting your eye over 💗
I was going to ask who was doing the rowing 😉 Go David 😁
It looks so peaceful and tranquil.
Yeah apparently my attempts at rowing were “not helping” 🤷🏻♀️
😅
Baby birds! Who knew they had such distinct personalities? (You did).
It's interesting how the majority actively choose chaos...
I feel this way about my cats. I have 4. 2 love each other, one doesn't care about anyone but her own beauty, the fourth will fuck you up if you look at her sideways. And she attacks one particular cat who is harmless. And I think, why do you choose to be this way? You could be the other way, but you choose this. Birds and cats, hey?
“Why are you like this..?!” 🤷🏻♀️
Thank you so much for the kind words about my essay, Chloe. And as always, thanks for the reverence and honesty in your ideas and prose. I think I might gladly swap my dread for yours, which, despite your sense of malevolence, seems nonetheless to have a kind of healing awareness to it as well. I suppose that comes from within, of course, from your good sense of yourself and place in the world. My own dread at 3AM is the usual and random mess of events and ideas and people battering my consciousness, all quite unmanageable. So my response is to envision myself walking on a specific trail that I know and love, almost step by step, into the Grand Canyon here in the U.S. Maybe my descending a mile into the earth, past millions of years of geological history, is similar to your earthen cocoon. Mine as well holds me so that I drift back to sleep.
David’s probably right about the last Bengal tiger. To get a sense of what that last Passenger Pigeon might have felt, and to feel the pain of an endangered bird, I suggest Last of the Curlews by Fred Bodsworth (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/15478/last-of-the-curlews-by-fred-bodsworth-afterword-by-graeme-gibson-afterword-by-graeme-gibson/9780771093890/excerpt). I suspect it would resonate very much with you. I read it some years ago — it’s moving (and I hope not overwrought; at least I don’t think it is).
In any event, I am so far behind on my reading and commenting — but so glad to have caught up with another brilliant essay of yours. Thanks again.
Bryan, thank you so much for taking the time to read, and to comment. I’m sorry to hear of your dread, truly, and also a little intrigued by the fact that both our minds choose to take us deeper into the earth by way of solace… I so appreciate you sharing Fred Bodsworth’s book, I read the first chapter and, you’re right, it resonates with me very much. I’m glad that people are thinking to write in this way, and look forward to reading the rest. I’m behind, too. Something about this time of year sees my capacity lessening significantly, so I’m a little slow at the moment. Excited to read your latest though. Thank you, Bryan. Sending love.
What a glorious canal trip!! I hope that while there you were able to offer up the existential dread to nature. She’s amazingly good at taking it and letting it dissipate into millions of tiny atoms which get overwhelmed by the perfection of her beauty. Otherwise, feel free to send it up in the air and direct it towards Australia. It should be ‘plum tuckered out’ by the time it gets here. Grin. Take care dear soul. Sending heaps of love, hugs and best wishes. 🤗🤗😃😃😘😘🌼🌼
Beth! It was pretty special. I’m trying to offer it over, bit by bit. I so love the visual of her “taking it and letting it dissipate into millions of tiny atoms which get overwhelmed by the perfection of her beauty.” What a gift. 💗And, great idea re sending it all the way to Australia, it’d be exhausted!! 😄 Thank you so much for being here, Beth. You light up the place ♥️ Much love.
I’m delighted to have found you here. I love the attention to detail and your loving and humorous descriptions of the baby birds. To this, I couldn’t agree more: “And that’s exactly why my greatest hope is that we all, in whatever way we feel most moved to, find active ways to profess our love—for the natural world, for our brothers and sisters, human and otherwise.” Thank you. May it be so.
Delighted to have been found, thank you so much for reading, Julie. May it be so.
When my personal 3AM wins it’s because it convinces me I’m the Last Bengal Tiger, and I don’t even notice to challenge that. It’s not that I’ll cease to be but, worse, that I’m alone. Generally speaking, by 6AM I can see the absurdity in that, but woe is 3:45, 4:15, 5:22…
There’s definitely a 3am voice that likes to lie and say that I am the only person in the world experiencing sleeplessness, turmoil, confusion and so on. The Birds kicking off around dawn is usually what brings me round. Think I might title my album ‘Woe is 3.45’.
You could be like Adele. Every new album you could add fifteen minutes.
I love your thinking. I'll call the 10th album Birdsong and then disappear into obscurity.