Eastern bluebird photos by Jonathan Schechter
(photographed in my yard:  Brandon Township, Michigan  Feb 20, 2012)

Henry David Thoreau wrote, "I went to the woods because I wished to see if I could not
learn what life had to teach --- and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
That timeless quote of Thoreau has been with me ever since my hippie days back in the
hills of Plainfield Vermont when he was my author of choice and I was a
long-haired, bearded, tree-hugging nature loving student at Goddard College.
 And it was there in the meadows of my dreams that I first discovered bluebirds.
Some things have changed:
Hair is much shorter--and much thinner
Beard is gone.
Some things have not changed:
Still  a hippie at heart.
Bluebirds thrive in my Michigan meadow and alight on old fence posts.
Thoreau also penned, "The bluebird carries the sky on his back."
 I know that to be true. For on gray Michigan days the bluebird's sky-blue back makes me
 smile  and  drift back to  happy days of discovery in Vermont where I became a fan of
Thoreau's words in  meadows,  meadows above the Winooski River and near covered
bridges where bluebirds led me deep into the world of nature.