Stone Walls

Some may know what they seek in school and church,
And why they seek it there; for what I search
I must go measuring stone walls, perch on perch;

excerpted from Robert Frost's A Star in a Stoneboat

This whole poem is interesting - about looking for fallen stars in stone walls, of which there are miles and miles all over New England, but I find something else in this segment of the poem. It makes me think of all there is to learn outdoors. For me stone walls have always had a mysterious fascination. It is as if the past is somehow buried within them, and if I knew how to access it, I could learn about the people who built the walls, and those who have walked along them over the years. So, like Robert Frost, I traipse along stone walls, seeking for something that I have not yet learned. And this is when I get to see many of the denizens of stone wall country - today I saw an American robin with the sun shining full on its "red breast", I saw two red-bellied woodpeckers yakking at each other in a tree, I saw a red squirrel sitting on a stone wall eating a clementine, I saw the deer back at my birdfeeder, I saw a song sparrow singing at the top of a still-bare tree. And the buds on the trees are swelling - it won't be long now before the first hints of green appear. The whitetail bucks will begin growing their new racks, and if I'm lucky I'll see a fawn passing through with its mother.

(a perch, in this instance, is a linear measure of varying length, depending on where used)