The Hermit Thrush
Beyond the mounds of snow, and the possibility of another storm, there is the knowledge that a shift in the weather is just afew weeks away. Many of us are already imagining a warm day at the lake, listening to the waves lapping up onto the shore and feeling the warm sand under our feet.
When we were growing up summer meant trips to visit our beloved Uncle Jim and Aunt Barbie at their summer cottage on Merrymeeting Lake in New Durham. As they did not have children their nieces and nephews were welcomed throughout the summer. These were magical visits. Standing on the rocks trying to catch crayfish. Straining our eyes over the edge of Uncle Jim’s boat to try and find the chimney of the house that had formed the lake … “someone left the water running” we were told. Siting in front of the fireplace, just before going to bed, and after a story or two, Uncle Jim would clap his hands and a calico frog named Freddie would come flying over the wall. Uncle Jim had so engaged us with his eyes we hadn’t noticed that Aunt Barbie had slipped away. It was a wonder.
Uncle Jim died in 1996. Aunt Barbie celebrated her 100th Birthday in 2016 and we are already planning for her 101st Birthday celebration in June. She loves reminiscing with us about the summers at Merrymeeting.
I recently found a short essay Uncle Jim wrote entitled: “Double Helix” and I thought I would share it would you.
Last night a hermit thrush sang, once again, it’s lovely evensong. A cadence of pure joy, addressing itself to the slowly setting sun. A song no human voice, or instrument, could ever aspire to emulate. And we listened enthralled and enraptured to the haunting refrain.
A visiting friend, a cynic, was not as visibly impressed as I and despaired the beauty we claimed to hear in the lilting song. “It’s only because its programmed that it always sings like that. In all of our forests the thrushes sing the self-same tunes,” he says.
In a sense he may be right, if some of our geneticists are right. They say a DNA chain of the most primary chemicals the world contains are wrapped in a double helix, with molecules interwoven just so, and this determines who we are, or what we are, our own uniqueness.
Some greet Creative Power beyond the limits of our little finite minds. Pieces together in the marvelous molecular strands within a double helix. Thereby sorting it out in components, which may then become a human, or a Tasmanian tiger, a whale, a snow leopard, a chipmunk or a thrush.
Living here by the lake, with an encroaching forest just behind us, you get a new perspective and, in fact, an enhancement of such axioms. All about you are the lake and forest creatures you know as presences, which represent the meaning and all the magical possibility of lie. … But, as for me, when my thrush sings from it’s hemlock perch, I choose not to equate it with some programmed possibility I’ll enjoy it for the spontaneous pleasure it brings to me. Thank you, my songbird friend, my kinsman, I loved your song.
James S. Millar
The spring equinox occurred on Monday morning, March 20th at 6:20 a.m. Soon we will be noticing bulbs pushing through the earth and the sounds of the birds, perhaps even the hermit thrush as they migrate north earlier in the spring and lingers later in fall than many of the other birds.