A White weekend: Looking up at vultures and back over three years of song

Spent this weekend celebrating the third anniversary of my White weekend.  Drove many, many roads in between West Va and Baltimore. Listened to many, many glorious songs.  In between those, spent some time in woods and fields and saw many wondrous things.  

Picked up a cardinal's feather and marveled at how it shifted from rust to scarlet depending on how the sunlight hit it.   

Saw a lady bug crawling sluggishly in the leaf duff on the trail, surprising on such a cold day. 

A crow flew overhead and muttered a "grokgrokgrok" at me around an unidentifiable object clamped in its beak. 

Was startled by a trio of grey-headed black vultures that swooped up from a ditch not ten yards away and soared in loops above me for a minute or so, one seemingly harassing another and the third just along for the ride. 

Stopped on the way home for something I've never seen the like of before-- Dozens of turkey vultures- hell, it had to have been at least a hundred or more- lazily wheeling and whirling over a Victorian-era train station.  I've seen those giant flocks of small birds that resemble clouds rising and shifting in the air in perfect sync, but I've never seen anywhere near so many vultures in one spot.  The sight forced me to stop, get out, and lie back against the hood of the car to watch.  When the huge birds were angled just right in flight, the 5:00pm sun shining up from below turned the white undersides of their wings golden and they looked just like late autumn maple seedpods, those winged whirlygigs that spin to the ground like helicopters.  Then, ever so gradually, the vultures just... dispersed, and were gone. 

Drove past one of the best street names ever--  Trackless Sea Court.  Would be a wonderful thing to live in a place that was a constant reminder of the seemingly infinite expanse of the ocean.

Yesterday, despite such arresting sights and experiences, the music was foremost in my perceptions.  Today, frustration interfered and kept distracting me from the songs I was trying to celebrate.  Just couldn't get a particularly troubling idea out of my head--  When is indifference truly indifferent, and when it is a mask for uglier things?  And in the latter situation, is it actually a mask... or is it a defense mechanism?  

People make me sad as often as they make me happy, but there is one thing that I don't think will ever, ever fail to make me glad--



Here's to many more years, Jack. Thank you for everything.