Ahead of him lay a white sea of yellow-eyed daisies, with purple iris high as his knees in between, and as far as he could see, waving softly in the breeze, was the cotton-tufted sedge he loved.

The pods were green.

In a few days they would be opening, and the tundras would be white carpets.
He listened to the call of life.

It was about him everywhere, a melody of bird-life subdued and sleepy even though the sun was still warmly aglow in the sky.

A hundred times he had watched this miracle of bird instinct, the going-to-bed of feathered creatures in the weeks and months when there was no real night.