I shudder to think what could have happened. What might happen. With electric trimmers whizzing, the guys lowered this hedge of barberries across from the bog. No one knew of the nest deep within. From the porch later, I saw a female Cardinal fly from the direction of these now shorter shrubs. She didn't go far but landed nearby. Fearing the worst, I dashed to the rail and peered over hesitantly. As suspected, I found a nest. Thankfully, it was intact. But it now sat completely exposed — no longer nestled in dense, thorny branches for protection from predators, weather and the like. Sadness set in. Would the young survive?
Mama came back. She's still tending the nest. One thing I learned early on sharing this hill with wild things: wild things do their own things — the next things — without, to quote a long-time favorite poem by Wendell Berry, "forethought of grief." There's a peace in that wise way, and I must get better at it.
THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS
by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
