Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

Eventually my plan brought me to a dead-end in a farmer’s backyard. Apologizing for my intrusion, I backed out & had to retrace my course for a ways. Sunset behind a little grove in a flat pasture.
New Oregon road northward. By noon it is twilight. Park by some “bearded” hills. Cicadas still singing—A wood thrush, with its endlessly varied liquid song—A beautiful sound—metallic, yet soft & bell-like, suggesting low damp places with jewel-weed.
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A day that was beautiful in every detail from first to last, and one in which I felt the wonder of nature as if it were newly created (as indeed it is personally) and yet somehow I cannot put it down on paper. I feel lacking.
Thinking about that red-bird and how the sight and sound of it “renewed” my youth—I think my feeling about birds is that they are immortal—this bird is one of the ones I heard as a youth.
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1st -- “Sewing Machine” grasshopper, July 19
1st-- Tree cricket-- July 26
1st “Z”ing short-horns-- July 22