If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet 

A single indigo bunting appeared on one of our bird feeders a few days ago. Since then, he’s returned multiple times, and I’m equally astonished each time. Buntings are small birds–think bigger than a goldfinch but smaller than a robin–but their splendor is great and immeasurable. In the right light, they are neon blue, otherworldly blue, a blue that makes bluejay-blue wave the flag of surrender. In the jewel box of summer birds, here is a true sapphire, a real sparkler.

Seeing this bunting makes me happier than I can say. I’ve waited for almost 24 years to see one at my feeder. My family can attest to my obsession with the elusive indigo bunting. They tell tales of how I’ve nearly walked into all sorts of objects, my eyes trained on the tree tops, my ears fixed on the bunting cries. They’ve been known to say things like, “If you see Mom standing in the middle of the yard looking at the tree line, she hasn’t lost her mind. She probably thinks she’s spotted an indigo bunting” or “If Grandma shushes you, don’t take it personally. She probably thinks she’s heard an indigo bunting in the timber, and she’s trying to locate it.” It’s safe to say that my obsession manifests itself in behavior that some may call crazy. I call it necessary. For one intent upon small things hardly noticeable, such vigilance is necessary. You have to be prepared–even if it means an occasional run-in with a parked car or lawn chair.

Yes, you must be prepared to look for those small things which often become immeasurably great. Years ago when I was walking the rural roads in late summer, the roadsides and ditches were largely mown off. The county crews had cleared them of Queen Anne’s lace, wild chicory, trefoil, and occasional stands of daylilies. There was something funereal about these shorn shoulders of gravel roads that stretched for miles along the creek bottoms. One day, however, I looked down to see a 50-yard stretch of roadside where wild chicory had begun to grow again. Here were miniature versions of the chicory’s summer self; small but stout stems held star-shaped periwinkle blossoms. You can’t keep a good wildflower down, I thought as I marveled at the life that had risen against all odds from the hard-packed clay of late summer.

In her 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard reflects on the time she spent at Tinker’s Creek in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. With Dillard, I find myself in good company, for she, too, is unabashedly obsessive about those things in the natural world that simply amaze her:

I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering, and like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt’ring eye and say, “Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?” The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter; I mean to change his life.

I’m certain that I’ve fixed family and friends with that wild, glitt’ring eye as I’ve recounted my hunt for the elusive indigo bunting. If I could hear their thoughts, I’m guessing that I’d hear collective groans: Oh no, she’s going to talk about that bird again. . . . But, like Dillard, I don’t set out to make idle chatter with my bird talk but to change lives. Because the preternatural blue of the indigo bunting is life-changing. Oh, there may be innocents who flee the tales of bunting or goat moth sightings, but I’ve learned to let them go. You just can’t force this kind of wonder on those who have no eyes to see.

Just this morning I was leaving the nature preserve and noticed some hefty waves in the pond across the road, so I decided to investigate. I suspected the work of muskrats, but I was wrong. At the pond’s edge, there were two behemoth snapping turtles mating. For a time, they circled each other in a ritual dance. And then they locked up, their prehistoric claws wrapped around each other, their tails, like antennae, shooting straight for sky. They floated entwined–an eight-legged reptilian marvel–as mist burned off the pond, and curious sunfish moved around and below them. For at least ten minutes I stood there, rapt. When one of the naturalists pulled into the parking lot to begin her day’s work, I considered yelling and beckoning her to come and see. But I didn’t. I stood there alone, bearing witness. Eventually, I ran to my car to get my cell phone, so I could take a video. For proof, I thought, as I imagined recounting this event to my family who would almost surely question that this was what I’d really seen and might chalk it off to a just another new obsession. For nearly 10 glorious minutes, it didn’t occur to me to take a photo. I inched towards the pond’s edge, watching, barely breathing, and fully present. This is the power of an ordinary, natural act that unexpectedly becomes great and immeasurable.

In Wendell Berry’s poem, “The Peace of Wild Things,” he writes of the peace of wild things like the wood drake and heron which “do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.” He commends the “grace of the world” which gifts us with “still water” and “day-blind stars.” I love this poem, for it speaks to the heart of those, like Dillard, who contend that “[b]eauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.” It speaks to the heart of those who want to do their part, to bear witness to their share of beauty and grace. It speaks to a world grown weary of ugliness and evil, a world that too often sacrifices the natural for the artificial. It speaks to me as I continue to explore my own habitat in search of small things of inestimable worth.

In her book, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters, Annie Dillard claims that “[a]t a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive.” Although it’s taken decades, I believe that I’m ready. I want to be present for those small things that poet Rainer Maria Rilke believes may unexpectedly become great and immeasurable. And I want to know the names of all these things, for to name them is to see them–and to love them.

There is always a sadness about packing. I guess you wonder if where you’re going is as good as where you’ve been.
― Richard Proenneke, One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey

Even as I write this post, I can hear my critic-voice accusing me of being too maudeline. Still, I must confess that I’m sad. Sadder than I’ve been for a long time. There’s no getting around it: packing up is sad business.

Yesterday, my family home became someone else’s home. When I close my eyes, I will always be able to walk the rooms and see where my mother placed all her treasures, most secondhand or inherited finds from family and friends. I can see my father’s racing pigeon trophies high on the book shelves in his den and the gallery of family photos that completely took over the upstairs hallway. I can see the bedroom where I slept under the eaves and the small galley kitchen where we once ate on stools, barely an inch of space between us. When you pack up a house, you also pack up the glorious and the painful moments that have lived companionably in that space. And I suppose that, as author Richard Proennecke writes, you wonder if where you’re going is a good as where you’ve been.

I recently learned of the death of a dear friend. Her unflagging optimism and quirky sense of humor sustained me throughout junior and senior high school. We shared secret jokes that insulated us from the sharp edges of the “popular girls.” We cooked up missions that sent us into unsuspecting yards to pose with the lawn ornaments there just as cars of college students passed. We shared an appreciation for the humor of Jerry Lewis and regularly greeted each other in the school hallways with “Come fly with me!” We got each other. And this was more than enough to make the slings and arrows of adolescence bearable. We pack up homes, but we also pack up lives, boxing up moments and images that we’ll carry with us. Today, I remember my friend and know that I’ll need a storage container for the friendship I’ve packed.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been really lousy at leaving places and people. While others may part in what appear to be graceful exits, mine are most often messy, slobbering affairs. I always had to circle the block several times when I left my parents’ home, hoping to get one last glimpse of them on the terrace. When I finished a school year, I always planned parting celebrations for my students, so that I could memorialize all we’d shared. As a young mother, when I drove out of town without my children, I felt the compulsion to formalize my goodbyes, just in case I died and never saw them again. Each time I drive into town, I still pass the Queen Anne house we left decades ago. It never occurs to me to take another route; it’s a ritual I must perform. Before I left my family home a week ago, I walked through each room and into each closet one last time, as I formally and tearfully let go. Then I packed up the life I’d lived there and drove away.

It comes as no surprise to me that I’m struggling with this season of packing up. As people I know and love die or move on, as familiar places change hands or are torn down, sadness seems inevitable. But it’s a particularly sweet sadness that comes with boxes of treasures, all waiting to be opened again–and again. It’s a sadness that overwhelms you with tears one moment and smiles the next. And it’s a sadness that reminds you that you have loved and been loved and that your storerooms are full.

Packing Up
--for my siblings

I’ve been trying to pack up all our treasures:

that bright space we leaped into,
our nightgowns like flannel sails in the evening air
as we jumped from bed to bed,
the wooden slats underneath trembling—once breaking—
and our father, cajoling and laughing,
urging us higher, but quietly or your mom will hear;

the moments after supper
when dark mounds of fudge cooled on wax paper
and us crowding the kitchen doorway, salivating
and asking Now, now?

the history of us around the big table,
warming our lives over casserole and pie,
each of us refusing to be the first to leave,
all of us tethering ourselves to the wooden chairs
which numbed our butts beyond reason.

All these things I’ve tried to pack,
knowing that soon I’ll shut the door 
on our family home one last time,
fearing that I may not remember the magic of my closet,
the sweet hours there with dolls and books and plastic horses,
fearing that I won’t hear the gray cat purring on our mother’s lap
or the low cries of mourning doves from the eaves,
fearing that I may not be able to close my eyes
and see the walls papered with our father’s words.

Yet even now as I close the door,
there is the soft hum of the black Singer from the basement
and our mother’s able hands
stitching these remnants into a family.