That was yesterday’s unbidden. I woke up at about 5:50, and I lay in bed listening intently for any sound. It was still dark out and aside from the shoosh of a car or two on Clarksville, it was silent save the birdsong that grew in variety and number. We’d seen them all at our bird feeder: bluebirds, chickadees, mourning doves, red-winged blackbirds, woodpeckers of all sorts, thrushes, cardinals big and small, robins, grackles. A chorus of joy even with heavy clouds and a cold rain that would last the whole day as the movers came and packed our things one by one. I hope I will always remember what it was like, the times last fall when there were even owls hooting in the early morning. The sounds of dozens of geese, but mostly the quiet. It never got fully silent of course, because there was water always cascading over the dam at Grover’s Mill. And I hope the memory left here of Bruno’s happy barking will echo across the pond forever.
Chris Bell's Journalismo 