Although a native of Pennsylvania, after a peripatetic upbringing, and more years of moving about as an adult, I made my home in the Midlands of South Carolina.
The compound in which I live here in Riyadh is nice, though the architecture is decidedly Middle Eastern, and most of the trees are date palms. Some of the courtyards, however, are planted with grass and deciduous trees. Last night, after sitting on my roof playing my whistle, I went for a walk in one of those courtyards. The sky above was clear, the moon waxing gibbous, Orion shining as a reminder that winter is not so long past. A pair of bulbuls were calling to one another in a tree overhead. For an instant, as I stood there in the grass, looking at the moon and familiar stars, framed in leafy branches, their call seemed very like that of the chuck-will’s-widows back home. For that instant, I was back in my beloved southeast.
Don’t take the sights, sounds, and smells of your own backyard for granted.