There are many ways to walk on a trail. There are times when I walk in order to talk with a friend, get to know a person. Other times, I walk by myself, wondering as I wander like the Kentuckian folksinger John Jacob Niles. When, at 26 years old, a misplaced Kentuckian living in Montana, I learned how to “bird,” I found yet another way to walk, a way where my tinkering mind quieted, and I could hold each present moment, lingering in the forest, in the meadow, by the wetland, with my binoculars fixed to my eyes, watching wild birds do their secret magic of flying, full of hollow bones, covered in a quilt of feathers.
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