When April rains fall on Moses Creek and wake the dormant winter roots, and when the warm sun, following, fills the woods with wildflowers, bird songs and budding leaves, and suddenly the whole valley is on its way to spring’s green apogee, then travelers from North Carolina and other states fly to Kathmandu, Nepal, where, breathing oxygen from tanks on their backs, and with their minds partly crazed with cold, they try to climb Mount Everest, the world’s tallest peak, “Because it’s there.” For mountain climbers, our spring coincides with the best of Everest’s bad seasons to attempt its frozen summit. 

I was on the ridge this morning admiring the autumn-red leaves of a gum tree, lit up by the rising sun, when a titmouse landed and, fixing his black eye on me, shouted a word in Bird I know — “Snake!” He shouted it so loud you could have heard him down in the yard. And every time he shouted it, he turned first one way on the branch, then the other. And with every turn, he fixed the eye on that side of his head on me.