Nature's Napster

If you leave Chicago via the South Eastern suburbs. You will encounter industrial roads by the bucketful as well as Indiana. Now, I never thought I'd find myself saying this but perservere because soon you will encounter some unlikely heroes - The trees of Southwestern Michigan. Ordinarily you wouldn't expect to hear praise for this part of the world. Not only do they eschew road signs in a cunning plan to stop the Red Hordes (Imagine this for a moment, the Chinese have crossed the Rockies and the great Plains only to be stymied by their inability to find Three Oaks and Buchanan (with an 'ew'), Niles and Vandalia.) but they put a bloody great hill in your way as soon as you realise you're lost. Bastards.

Anyway, SW Michigan's farms aren't as ubiquitous as they are in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Northwestern Illinois. As a consequence, Water Towers are the unchallenged Kings of the horizon and there is room for lots of trees. That, my friends is a good thing. Now these trees, although not quite every shape and size, are sufficiently varied to ensure a changing vista at every turn and the colour green rules the roost, occasionally interrupted by a deep purple. Having been battered into submission by attempting to walk around a suburban Chicago for a long weekend, this becomes close to paradisiacal (Spelling? Anyone.). Incidentally, here's the CDC advice for walking in US suburbia - Don't! The trees also provide a service to humanity that as far as I know carries no fee. They help to suck up the pollution caused by the industries along the Sothern Lake Michigan coast.

But the best result of the plethora of trees is the greatest of Evolutionary joys, birdsong. There have been some exceptions to this, that lady who played the elf? who gave up immortality in'Lord of the Rings' springs to mind, as does Precious (the bike, not the ring), but these are the exceptions. Birdsong rules the genetic roost. There can be no-one unmoved to song when a chorus of tweets rents the air. One particularly odd species sounds exactly like R2D2. I'm no poet but hearts uplift and spirits soar as joy rises from your well of life. It's no coincidence that such verbs mirror the acts of birds. The motley melodies resonate wildly and before long you'll be tunelessly singing the music of your youth before an audience of roadkill and startled sheep. Birds will temporarily be quietened into curiousity and, with luck, begin to follow, confused into an evolutionary dead end. Soon, they'll return to their own youthful soundtracks and begin again singing with the all the exuberance that summer musters. Next time you're out amongst all the glory nature has to offer and you hear the birds clearing their throats, before you know it, you, too, will be making up the words to 'Songbird'.