A morning walk

This morning the redbirds' eggs
have hatched and already the chicks
are chirping for food.  They don't
know where it's coming from, they
just keep shouting, "More! More!"
As to anything else, they haven't
had a single thought.  Their eyes
haven't yet opened, they know nothing
about the sky that's waiting.  Or
the thousands, the millions of trees.
They don't even know they have wings.

And just like that, like a simple
neighborhood event, a miracle is
taking place.
--Mary Oliver

By 7:30 this morning, I was out walking, walking while my house cleaner does whatever she does, but restricted by me today to two hours in which to do it.  No place for me to eat, no place to sit down, while she did it  -- so I walked.

After a bit, I found myself walking down "Frat Row" adjoining the campus.  No Greeks, no geeks, today; few walkers other than me.  Little traffic.  Campus is shut down.

The sky was blue.  After several cloudy days, the sun was out.  It was an orangish sun, low in the sky, casting bluish shadows of trees and houses.  Flowers are everywhere now in Seattle, blooming in the crisp morning air, in defiance of the Pandemic.  The trees along Frat Row are horse chestnuts, late bloomers among trees, and they were just budding into small leaves.

Squirrels scurried away in panic as I approached.  Rabbits dashed about on unknown errands.  Birds darted from tree to tree, pouncing upon unknown targets they spotted hiding in the lawns.

This is the way the world seemed, I thought, in simpler times.  This stretch of North Seattle spread out before me like a rural village described in an eighteenth century vicar's diary.  Quiet, shaped by humanity, but shaped  by humans who possessed a love of nature.  I felt peaceful, relaxed, unworried by viruses, and happy to be walking.

I recalled an interview with a mortician in yesterday's New York Times Magazine.  He claimed he is constantly reminded in his work how "very, very short" human life is, even for those of his "clients" who have lived past 100.  I thought of those who are now dying "early" from Covid-19, and were missing the beauty of this morning.  But then I remembered all those in past centuries who had died even earlier.  Their poets often died early -- Keats (25), Shelley (30) -- but they experienced much in their short lives, and had converted their experiences into lasting poetry.   And their friends and colleagues -- whether having lived lives long or short, whether famous or obscure -- had long ago passed away.   As would we.

Each day has its own beauty, and each of us enjoys it in his own way.  And whether we enjoy it for a hundred years or for only twenty years makes little difference, certainly "in the long run."  Certainly compared with the age of the Earth, of the Universe.    To have even one year as a conscious adult, rather than never to have existed, seems an incredible and unexpected gift.

I usually don't feel that way, and I probably won't in another 24 hours, but I did this morning.  I felt that way, combined with my recurring realization that what we experience every day through our senses is only our subjective interpretation of reality, a picture we construct in our minds.  A picture we impose on what -- as physics teaches us -- appear to be a vast number of probability waves.  Or, as the British biologist J. B. S. Haldane has said:

My own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

Or, as Joni sang more simply, "I really don't know life at all."

I suppose Mary Oliver's poem is especially appropriate as we approach Easter.  We are all fledgling chicks with our eyes closed, begging for "More! More!"  Today's walk down Frat Row gave me an inkling that there was an unseen metaphorical sky above and a million metaphorical silent trees surrounding me -- waiting for me to open my eyes.

But only an inkling.