July

It is July in Maine which usually means that the mosquitoes and tourists are rampant. I am much more interested, however, in France in 1914-1915, than anything around me at the present time. Bits of images keep floating around in my head. I recently read snippets from diaries written at the time. Siegfried Sassoon and Lady Cynthia Asquith's stand out, as one would expect. But a young Australian officer wrote of the various birds he heard while waiting to be killed. It was both poignant and haunting. I can't help but think of him when sitting on our screened porch here in the woods. I have started to read "The Great Silence" by Juliet Nicolson who also wrote "The Perfect Summer." How quickly life can change when you aren't looking.