flavours of solitude

Today husband had to travel to the Galilee to visit my second son at his base, which meant I was alone for the afternoon walk for a change. My sixteen year old daughter was home for my boys when they got back from school, so no worries there. You know, much as I really enjoy sharing the valley and the nature watching with husband it did make a refreshing change to enjoy the outdoors completely alone. For one thing, I wasn't distracted by the usual chatter about current and family affairs we get into and could simply soak in the scents and sounds. It was lovely to just take off and walk carefree into the pines, hit the central trail and enjoy the sun and breezes and quiet. Being alone and surrounded by nature is both tremendously peaceful and empowering for me. I spend plenty hours alone in front of the P.C. living in cyberspace but that's not the same at all. It's a totally different flavour of aloneness. The great outdoors with lovely trees filling the air with oxygen, the vast clear porcelain blue skies and the scents of pine and woodsmoke and any other fragrances of the season... delectable and timeless.

Today far to the east the escarpment of Jordan was visible beyond the Jordan rift valley, way beyond the hills east of our own valley. The great valley itself was filled with greyish vapours but the late afternoon sun shone on the mountain sides way in the distance. Teashirt weather for sure, no need for jackets, but good shoes are a must, the way is full of stones and boulders and the waxing moon was already up in the eastern sky.

House sparrows and Senegal doves were active around the buildings as usual and I heard a covey of chukar partridges calling down in the north valley. Graceful warblers trilled like animated alarm clocks. In the woods Eurasian jays and Syrian woodpeckers called, active as ever, especially the jays, they were conspicuous all over the place. Toward sunset it was time for the crow flyby. A mixed flock of over a hundred put up from somewhere on the hills to the north and headed to their arboreal roost to the south. Hooded crows and jackdaws, in their own distinct subflocks but travelling as one broad flock. Many of the jackdaws called shortly after lift off and were answered by those in a smaller flock coming up from the hillslopes around Hizmeh, also heading south to roost. There was a distinct woodsmoke aroma around look-out corner but no smoke anywhere, I suspect it was older burnt ground I could smell.

Before that I heard plenty yellow vented bulbul and great tit calls in the orchard as well as greenfinch calls all around there. A few collared dove put up, silent but for the whistle of their wings. Blackbirds chacked away in the woods as usual but no gazelle put in an appearance at all, I checked all their usual places.

Husband was busy driving rather than looking but he did notice a family of Pied kingfishers Ceryle rudis and an egret near Jericho, as well as plenty Senegal doves, domestic goats, cows and several dromedary camels along the Jordan valley road.