Notebook 10: Camouflage. Start of November

It's about time I ended my role as observer of nature and went back to being a mere participant, but I have one last experience I'd like to share. It so happened that I was standing at the corner of Johnson Lane and Central Avenue, just across the street from the airport field. It was a chilly afternoon on its way to become a cold evening. The sky was mostly painted in shades of gray and cutting wind kept insinuating itself under my coat, but there was enough rays of sunlight peeking through to keep the day from being too unpleasant.

I was not trying to observe nature, but rather was out there to smoke a cigarette where I wouldn't bother (or be bothered by) my roommates. I had never been much of a smoker before, but more than just the weather has changed since I moved up here and it's amazing how quickly boredom and listlessness can lead to some truly bad habits. So there I was, half-smoked American Spirit in my mouth, inhaling long drags of natural, organic poison, stopping occasionally to flick away a bit of gray ash (I try to be a good environmentalist and always hold onto my butts to throw away later, but this sort of pollution is easier to justify because it's biodegradable. I doubt the plants like it though.), when out over the airport field there came to be dozens of wheeling robins.

The robins did not seem to have come from anywhere, they simply were. One instant, it had been an empty brownish field. The next, there was a great mass of low-flying birds coming over it. Thirty robins or more came and settled on the wire of the airport fence. More came rushing over my head and landed in some high trees in one of my neighbor's yard. Some landed on the ground and started pecking at things amid the grass, but most didn't seem to be looking for food but rather had gathered there for some nebulous form of socialization. I have seen plenty of bird flocks in my time, but I'm still a little bowled over by the sheer personality these robins have. None of them seemed to be able to stay still for very long and instead they were flying from perch to perch preening and strutting and peeping while their breasts glowed the same color as the setting sun.

They kept on like this for no more than a few minutes and half a cigarette until, responding to some unknown signal, the great mass of them rose up all and once, flew back over my head, the road, and the airport fence and completely disappeared amid the grasses of the field. It was a neat trick to say the least. A few birds had stuck around in the trees and on the fence and I looked at them, seeing how the brown feathers of their back perfectly matched the tone of the dry grass, seeing how those flamboyant red breasts blended with the rusty colors of blackberries stalks and dry brush to become invisible against the backdrop of the field in the afternoon light. I stayed there for a little while burning another cigarette down to the filter and wondered if there was some place out there where I could disappear into the landscape of this place just as seamlessly as those birds and, if so, where it might be.