But on the other hand....

Nature has been kind to me on this trip. I've seen gold finches, song birds of all kinds and orioles (not the baseball team, either - the original orioles).

I've spent mornings and evenings sitting on the cottage's little porch, listening to the birds calling and watching the sun rise or set. In the evening I've watched little bats swirl and dip in their search for mosquitoes and I've cheered them on.

I've watched the morning mist spread across the meadow in front of the cottage and wondered if that was what the gunfire, the cannon fire, looked like as it moved like the breath of hundreds of dragons roaming the Battlefield. The cottage sits on land where Confederate troops marched to Gettysburg. Sometimes I hope to see a gray uniform walking through the high grass - would the specter disturb the birds - would the mourning doves call out to the passing visitor from another age? Would the groundhog skitter before him? Would the insects swirl around him? Or would he march silently across a land that has changed over the last 145 years, thinking he was still doing his duty and fighting for the cause?

A post about birds - orioles, a species that seems to be missing in my area - has turned into a post about missing soldiers from another time. Somehow the two seemed to join together in my mind - especially when I remember the mists hanging on the meadow in front of the cottage near Gettysburg.