Barred Owl courtesy of Dennis Church on Flickr

Earth Day didn’t start in the way I would have planned. We have hunkered down in a hotel while we wait for our septic system to be repaired. My foot is acting up again, so I can’t yet have the extra-long walk I have hoped for. Because we can’t use water at home, I typed this up at the laundromat.

I was restless in the unfamiliar room and slept lightly. That meant when Buddy asked to go out at 3:30 AM I was the designated walker. Tom snored through it all.

The roadside patch of grass and shrubs wasn’t especially scenic, but how heartening it was to witness Buddy’s pleasure in the scents. He was onto something exciting, something I couldn’t detect, and I worried that he’d start his insistent beagle yipping and baying if we got too close to the scent of a rabbit. The woods adjacent to the rear of the building are a small stand between the hotel and the next commercial venture, catching illumination from the streetlights on Route 1. But as I stood there and Buddy sniffed about, I heard a gentle question come from the trees at the back of the lot and it thrilled me. A Barred Owl asked, persistently, “Who cooks for you?,” pausing for my reply and getting none. I waited and listened, hearing him query a few more times before Buddy led me on to the next good (if undetected by me) smell.

How I would have loved to have seen the owl. I wrote a whole blog about how I never seem to spot them, and how Mary Oliver seems to see them everywhere! I am determined—spotting more owls is on my bucket list!

Chipmunks courtesy of madhan r on Flickr

After breakfast, I took Buddy back out for another walk. The small patch of woods again drew me, and when we stepped in and walked away from busy Route 1 I forgot the workaday world surrounding us. I had Tom’s binoculars and scanned in vain for the owl I’d heard hours before, to no avail. But a chipmunk couple honored the long tradition of a springtime chase across a forgotten stone wall and a stray daffodil graced a small berm. Green shoots pushed up everywhere, breaking through the monotone brown leaf litter. When we stepped back out of this small, forgotten zone, I heard a cardinal in the conifers across the road (one of just a few bird calls I can identify with certainty) and watched a gull gliding towards the same grove. A murder of crows shrieked by.

There are lots of spectacular celebrations of Earth Day today, but I am glad to be reminded that every day can be Earth Day if I take the time to stop and look around, to venture into even the small, somewhat forlorn places that, despite their lackluster appearance, nurture owls and new plants and no doubt countless spiders and worms and ants. And we can all do something to help the earth, too. Take this effort from the Sierra Club, as a start, to eradicate the tons of plastic waste that are choking our seas and marine creatures.

If we are back here at the hotel near dusk, maybe I can venture into the woods and find my inquisitive owl friend.

Happy Earth Day. I wish you happy discoveries in the world today, and every day.

PS: For a look back at the FIRST Earth Day, see this article that includes coverage of my friend George. It was a radical time. Interesting to note that the youth were leading the charge.