America, You’re Beautiful

In suburban D.C., a commute for the ages strikes a patriotic chord

I didn’t capture this image, but photographer Eric Diller saw something similar to my tale in 2012.

America, you’re beautiful. But you already knew that.

We moved to a wooded neighborhood on a suburban summit a while back. In addition to the fact that we have so many trees on our half-acre of Heaven that it’s impossible to grow grass (“Yes!” Moker exclaimed when made aware of the fact that he’d have more acorns and leaves to contend with than lawn maintenance chores. He says he’s allergic to grass. I say he possesses a great deal of antipathy toward mowing the lawn), our own sweet corner of Charlotte, NC, is friendly to critters.

Birds of all stripes chortle and chitter, 24/7. We have a friendly owl who usually chooses to “hoo” (for some reason he doesn’t enunciate, or I just don’t hear the “T” at the end of his “hoo,” although I’ve been assured by my son-in-law that he’s a “Hoot” Owl) at us from a tree near our bedroom between 5 and 6 a.m.; we hear his wise words from a farther distance as darkness descends on the neighborhood the night before. We have an extended family of black squirrels that skitters up and down the dozens of oak trees on our property, harvesting acorns and sometimes pausing in their labor to crack open a few and leave the assembled detritus strewn all over our front yard’s retaining wall. And the acorns surrounding…