The Fourth and the best possible place to be

This is my world as I write early on the Fourth of July. The grass hay is in big box bales in the fields below, drying in the sun. There's a deer feeding in the grasses. All is quiet on the river — too early yet for traffic. But not too early for the rooster crowing across the valley.

It seems he's singing, “Let freedom ring!” We have a lone flag atop a pole on the deck. Something prompted me outdoors on this blue sky day — sun lighting the mountains, but not quite over our ridge in its eastern climb — to go out there and stand before it.

A gentle breeze had come up — so the cloth fluttered in front of the pines. I found a rendition of The Star Spangled Banner on my phone and played it quietly. Sound carries in our mountain amphitheater — and not everyone's up at 6a. But that rooster — he doesn't care. He's a bold thing — going to sing in the new day loud and take everybody with him, ready or not.

The Grammy Award winner performing the national anthem didn't do any fancy spiraling notes. He just sang it plain and simple. Yet when he got to the word “free,” there was a way he emphasized it. Like the rooster, singing it bold. He made the word leap from the song.

That's what it should do. The entire flag drapes that one word. I felt it as a rock beneath me when he spoke it. The feeling carried me back a couple of weeks to a strawberry field in Green Bluff. Another blue sky morning — stooping over rows of plants plucking the succulent bright berries.

I was with a friend originally from Ukraine. She identified Russian speakers in the rows — parents with children — young couples — grandmothers and grandfathers — chattering contentedly among one another. I had no idea what they were saying — until one supreme moment.

An old man was carefully making his way toward another, carrying his brimming flat of berries. Suddenly he broke out in heavily accented English, “God bless America.” A proclamation unfurling over the strawberry field.

I do not know what that man's life has been. He obviously had to leave his homeland — and found refuge in this country. I could hear the relief — the gratitude — the sincerity. There was no doubt he was in the best place he could possibly be.

This morning there by the flag — just me — on this Fourth of July, hearing the Grammy singer pour it out on “land of the free” — I absolutely knew I, too, am in the best possible place.