San Juan Islands

A forest coastal landscape, moss-thick, familiar fir and red-barked madrone whose tea tastes like cinnamon, all of it living, seething with bird life: juncos, gold-crown kinglets, a brownish creeper, larger raptors above.  Peripheral vision counts dozens in the trees' limbs, up high silhouetted, on the earth, all pecking for seeds and insects as clouds thin and sunlight slowly melts through.