“The birds have started singing in the valley. Their
February squawks and naked chirps are fully fledged now, and long lyrics fly in
the air. Birdsong catches in the mountains’ rim and pools in the valley; it
threads through forests, it slides down creeks. At the house a wonderful thing
happens. The mockingbird that nests each year in the front-yard spruce strikes
up his chant in high places, and one of those high places is my chimney. When
he sings there, the hollow chimney act as a soundbox, like the careful
emptiness inside a cello or violin, and the notes of the song gather fullness
and reverberate through the house. He sings a phrase and repeats it exactly;
then he sings another and repeats that, then another. The mockingbird’s
invention is limitless; he strews newness about as casually as a god. He is
tireless, too; toward June he will begin his daily marathon at two in the
morning and scarcely pause for breath until eleven at night. I don’t know when
he sleeps.” —American essayist Annie Dillard,
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
(1974)
