This is Bird Note. Poet Sean Hill has moved around many times in his life, between Georgia,

California, Texas, Alaska, Minnesota, and now to Montana. While getting to know his new home in

the treasure state, Sean went up to Mount Helena for a hike. When I saw the western

manager flew by, it was this beautiful flash. I was like, okay, that's a good,

omen could auspice. I think I'm going to be okay in this place. Around the same time, Sean

went to a reading for a book about Rose Gordon, a black woman born in Montana in the late 19th century.

There's a lot of black folk who moved here more than you might think in the 19th century and raised

families and stayed for generations. And this person in the audience was like, why Montana,

why did these people come here? So part of it was like, why did people move places?

The western manager or why Montana? Are wanderings the same as migrations? I came to Montana for love,

which sometimes is how we know our destinations. The western manager flies here for procreation

when the snow goes wet, puddles, runs, and takes to far wandering. Is this the same as migration?

A life is the sum of grand and modest paragraph nations, communities bloom at the meeting of

opportunity and ambition, and can be a way to know our destinations.

A fire engine redhead cooling to orange to a sunny yellow body with those charcoal wings.

The male western manager flashes conflagration or an eastern autumn in flight.

One familiar greeted me after we both arrived, letting me know our wanderings weren't the same.

Is a migration?

In a stand of ponderoses where a blanket of snow lay for decades or longer, the dendrologist says,

these trees moved up from what's Mexico, as that quiet water pulled back, a different migration.

Moving seed by seed north generationally, migrating to where they had been and where they could live,

never asking how do we know our destination?

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