(HOST) Commentator Willem Lange has discovered that if you keep still – you see and hear a whole lot more.
(LANGE) I turned into the driveway, and there they were. The noise of the brook hid the sound of my little truck; I stopped before they looked up: a doe, two spotted fawns, and one of her yearling daughters. None of us moved.
Fifty years ago, how I loved to listen to the intoxicating roar of my car as I blasted through the gears! My neighbors found it less attractive. They suggested that when I left early each morning, I coast down the street before turning on the ignition and letting out the clutch.
Then I discovered something important: the less noise you make, the more you see and hear. I rode to hunting camp one day with an old-timer, and was surprised how silently he drove. The exhaust made only a little bubbling sound down close to the ground. And we saw deer! Ever since that day I have striven for automotive – if not personal – silence.
So there we stood, the five of us, in a rustic little tableau vivant. Then one of the fawns began to fidget, and bounded up into the hemlocks on my left. If I moved now, I would come between mother and child. The doe stared through the windshield into my intentions, which were utterly pacific. I drove past the three remaining, and up to the house.
An old-timer in Texas once told me I should absorb the intimate details of my habitual surroundings so any anomaly would be easy to detect and interpret. I’ve tried to do that, too. But I’m still surprised by some of the things that happen all around us.
The flowers appeared on schedule – trilliums, daffodils, irises. Peonies the first of June ~ day lilies at midsummer. I began looking for the Canada lily that bloomed down by the brook last summer. It’s been only one stalk for two years, with half a dozen perfect golden blooms. Day lilies turn their faces up, and hide them at night. Canada lilies hang downward, their scarlet-flecked petals almost hidden.
Each morning, as the dog and I went down or the paper, I searched for it. On the first of July, there it was! It had jumped the brook, and the driveway; there’s a second plant on the other side. When I recorded the sighting in my journal, I discovered the first of July is Canada Day.
Five years ago I spotted a new sapling beside the driveway. A black locust; some avian Johnny Appleseed must have brought it. I drove a metal fence post beside it and pulled it up straight. It’s over twenty feet high now. That fence post looks pretty puny beside it.
And, there’s another amazing anomaly. I bought my first digital watch in 1989, and I’ve never changed the battery. The band disintegrated long ago, but the watch is still digiting away. Recalling the old song, “My Grandfather’s Clock,” I’m trying not to associate its impending, inevitable silence with my own.
This is Willem Lange up in East Montpelier, and I gotta get back to work.