Walk with me. Be warned, though, you need to bring your ear plugs. I, of course, had no clue that they would be needed. The one day last week that I was able to hike was also the day that the Oregon International Airshow opened. Officially it started in the evening, but planes were already practicing during the day, low in the skies over Hillsboro where I happened to make my way through the wetlands.

The noise was deafening, and since I didn’t know then that the air show was slated, my thoughts went immediately to images of training for war, or some kind of emergency. Catastrophic thinking seems to be on a hair trigger these days. I wonder why.

I have written fairly recently about the soundscape of war and its long lasting psychological implications, for people living through war and suffering from PTSD. (Link for new readers, below). So, today I’ll just be looking at the positive side of things and share with you the sights. It will distract me from the fact that only 20% or so of all Oregonians voted, and the candidates I favored were, with few exceptions, not elected. Apathy sure enables the march towards less progressive times.

Here is a link to a video from the airshow that provides a bit of the noise that visitors experience. I was immediately underneath the planes at the time during practice, as you can see from the photographs.

The rest of nature’s sounds were drowned out, particularly the soft twittering from the songbirds and swallows who I had come to photograph.

It was so beautiful to watch them loop around before they went into the nesting sites, or met with their mates on top of them, that I soon forgot the distraction and focused on shimmering cerulean blues and teals and whites instead.

Flora was ready to compete, pink swaths of mallows coloring the meadow, pink valerian (sea foam) dotting the grass, and pink bleeding hearts hiding in the underbrush. Coral bells just about to blush.

Mystery Pink

Bright yellow popped up here and there, with common toadflax, buttercups and thapsias.

There were blue lupines, purplish blue wild irises, and camassia.

Whites everywhere, a perfect match to the white clouds above, the white of the arrowheads, the blackberry blossoms, the cowslip, the dog roses in large clusters, you name it.

Piercy’s poem captures it to perfection, even though we are still in May, not June and the lilies still hesitant. The mood was matched – as long as you kept your hands over your ears, plugging them with your fingers.

More Than Enough

The first lily of June opens its red mouth. 

All over the sand road where we walk 

multiflora rose climbs trees cascading 

white or pink blossoms, simple, intense 

the scene drifting like colored mist. 

The arrowhead is spreading its creamy 

clumps of flower and the blackberries 

are blooming in the thickets. Season of 

joy for the bee. The green will never 

again be so green, so purely and lushly 

new, grass lifting its wheaty seedheads 

into the wind. Rich fresh wine 

of June, we stagger into you smeared 

with pollen, overcome as the turtle 

laying her eggs in roadside sand.

BY MARGE PIERCY

Let’s have some cheerful music from a lovely debut album that brings warmer temperatures back into memory.