A summer shower cools the hot humid heat of the day.
Light lavender huckleberries in a few short weeks will become pies, jams and pan dowdy.
Summer's powerful greens cover every tree, bush and blade while the bird's sing out their hearts in and among them.
The month of June and the place is the borning room of nature. It is a time when Mother Earth's creatures are tending to their young in this Appalachian Mountain Country part of the world.
The babies...they come in assorted colors, sizes and shapes.
There is the Bambi in the woods...the Fawn...A speckled reddish delicate
wonder of beauty. It's as if the Milky Way has opened up, letting go its stars to land as
spots on their coat and bedazzle all who see them. Sometimes we may see twins frolicking
and beckoning us to come and play.
Around a tree stump or poking their heads out of a tree hole the little raccoons play peek-a-boo. Usually born in April they haven't lost their cub-like impishness and that may be the reason why Mother Nature placed a black strip or mask across their cheeks and eyes.
In the meadow, the coat of night, the cub bear comes in two's sometimes three's and stays with its Mother for just about as many years. It feeds on a variety of things including the very berry world of Summer.
Across the hill, poults or young wild turkey scatter and freeze at their Mother's warning call, remaining motionless until she sounds the all clear.
At the edge of the woods a brood of ruffed grouse chicks hide in the fern as their Mother feigns injury to take our eyes away from her young family.
Rarely seen but still a part of Appalachian Mountain Country's World is the bobcat kitten. Mainly nocturnal, they sometimes venture out of their dens in the daytime.
Appalachian Mountain Country means hills, valleys, slopes and meadows, streams, lakes and rivers, wildflowers in profusion, flora in abundance.
Appalachian Mountain Country Earth is a place to see, to hear and feel, to touch and taste the reason and rhyme for its rhythm and time.
Copyright © 1988, 1999 Barbara A. Smith and John G. Hipps. All rights reserved.
This essay was first published June 22, 1988 in the Free-Press Courier, Westfield, Pennsylvania.