Seeing things – or not seeing things

used to be able to see flying insects in the air. I’d look ahead and see not the row of trees across the road, but the air in front of it. My eyes would focus along that column of air, picking out flying insects. But I lost interest, I guess, because I stopped looking for them. Now I see birds. Maybe we only see what interests us.

Some people can look at the plants at their feet and discover all the grasses and sedges there. I can’t; I’m looking for poison ivy. I would like to know grasses and sedges. If I did, my shortest journey into the world would be a field trip — a series of wonderful discoveries. But I don’t see what the specialist sees.

Nature is a now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t affair. A fish flashes and then dissolves in the water before your eyes like so much salt. The brightest cardinal fades into leaves. Deer seem to ascend bodily into heaven. Such disappearances stun me into stillness and solemn reflection. Nature conceals with a grand nonchalance; vision is a deliberate gift, the revelation of a dancer who, for my eyes only, flings away her seven veils.

For a week two winters ago hungry blackbirds fed behind my house. One day I went out to investigate the racket. I walked toward a tree, a magnolia, and a hundred birds flew away. They simply materialized out of the tree. I saw a tree and then a whisk of black, then the tree again. I walked closer and another hundred took flight. Not a branch, not a twig, not a leaf moved; the birds were apparently weightless as well as invisible. It was as if the leaves of the tree had been freed from a spell in the form of blackbirds — they flew from the tree, caught my eye in the sky, and vanished. When I looked again at the tree the leaves had reassembled as if nothing had happened. Finally I walked directly to the magnolia’s trunk and a final hundred, the real diehards, appeared, spread, and vanished. The magnolia, unruffled, looked just as it had looked from the house, when three hundred blackbirds cried from its crown. How could so many birds hide in one tree and not be seen? Seeing is a matter of keeping your eyes open. Nature is like one of those line drawings of a tree that are puzzles for children. Can you find hidden in the leaves a duck, a house, a boy, a bucket, a dog, and a boot? I can’t see the minutiae, but I still try to keep my eyes open. I’m always on the lookout for ant lion traps in sandy soil and monarch pupae near milkweed. Common things, but I rarely see either of them. I bang hollow trees near our creek, but so far, no flying squirrels have appeared. I squint at the wind because I once read that if you looked close enough you could see the wind — the dim, hardly-made-out fine debris flying high into the air. But you can’t see it until you forget the naturally obvious — swaying trees, waving grass, moving clouds. We see what we expect. STANLEY TATE