Easy By Nature

Starting this month, Easy by Nature will arrive every two weeks instead of every week. Still Friday mornings — that part stays the same. There are a few reasons. The first is you. A lot of you have told me your inboxes are overflowing. The second is the writing itself. Three years ago I was just discovering I was a writer, and I poured myself into it. I want to go deeper now — to sit with a subject longer, go back out and look again, let a thought ripen.

Mercy and I rented a cabin in the woods just outside of Pere Marquette State Park over Labor Day weekend. We planned to visit the National Audubon Society bird sanctuary on the Mississippi River, but the forecasted temperature for the day was 100°. I have never experienced 100° in Illinois, and the thought of being out in the open along the Mississippi lost its appeal, so we chose the shady woods instead.

“And so I go into the woods. As I go in under the trees, dependably, almost at once, and by nothing I do, things fall into place… I enter an order that does not exist outside, in the human spaces. I feel my life take its place among the lives of the trees, the annual plants, the animals and birds, the living of all these and the dead – that go and have gone to make the life of the earth.” Wendell Berry, “A Native Hill” (1968), collected in The Long-Legged House Hazels are immortal.

Gray Catbird eating Elderberries Apples and pears hung from the trees like ornaments amongst still leaves. Then, a rumble and a wave of wind slipped through the treetops. The Silver Maple flashed white and the air went sharp. A distant hum. The soil exhaled. The western sky roiled and I was enveloped in a gray mist. The first raindrops fell sporadically, then uniformly, as water ran down limbs, down trunks, and around roots. The soil softened.

American Redstart scratching an itch Think back to when you were interested in befriending another kid in high school. Did you chase them around all morning? No. That would freak them out. Instead, you might wander around in their vicinity, occasionally glancing their way but acting blase’. Your attitude projecting, "Nothing to see here. I'm just wandering around. Definitely not interested in getting to know you." It's the same with birds.

I bargained up my new book designer. Dan is married to a Grand Prairie Bird Alliance board member and I met him at a neighborhood potluck. I told him about my book and how I was meeting with a book designer in Minneapolis. They were great to talk to and I learned a lot about book design. When I told Dan I was about to commit to a $7,000 contract with them, his eyebrows raised slightly and he asked me to send him the first 50 pages of my manuscript.

A small plate, delicately folded roast beef, pansies, and a dollop of Blackcurrant barbecue sauce. I press my fork into the beef, slide it through the barbecue sauce, then over the flowers and onto my tongue. I taste a light burst of salt, followed by the sweet tang of currants, then a trailing cascade of floral notes. I look around the room and see other tasters standing still, heads down, contemplating.

There is an old Japanese story about Momotaro the Peach Boy. An elderly childless couple ate a peach and became young again and had a baby boy. When he was a teenager he traveled across the countryside with a pheasant, a dog, and a monkey that joined him because he shared his millet dumplings with them. They traveled together to a remote island where they battled and defeated demons. I thought of that old story as I reached for a peach in my garden.

All photographs from Johnson, T.B., et al. 2026. "Seeing in the dark: Using thermal imaging to directly observe nocturnal migration." Ornithology 143(2). Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Ruby-crowned Kinglet by Tom Johnson. It’s 4 a.m. in Illinois. My son Noah is in Japan, where evening is just coming on. We are on opposite edges of the same shadow — I’m at the trailing rim of the night, he’s at the leading edge of his. His voice fills the room.

I pull up behind a line of cars and park in a gravel lot by Lake Evergreen, my kayak in tow. I walk back to my kayak, and I’m surprised to see a Killdeer flush from the gravel, feign a broken wing and try to lead me away. There is very little space here. The vehicles and the road on one side, the grass on the other. The grass is mowed short by the parks department. The road is busy. And yet there’s a brash bird calling loudly. How could she possibly nest here?