The Song of the Lark

When I was 19 I spent an entire night sitting in an ancient cemetery, talking with a group of Scottish kids in Edinburgh. It was as surreal as it sounds. They were students at the university, but were from the highlands, mostly farm kids. Near dawn, the larks started to sing. I wouldn't have known they were larks if they hadn't told me. Since then, I always recognize their song.

Later that summer, after returning home, I went on a rummage hunt at an antique market in a small farm town in Michigan. I wandered around most of the afternoon and randomly came across this painting. It was sitting in the grass in an old, cracked, wooden frame, leaning against a card table that was riddled with antique farm tools.

I asked the elderly woman sitting at the table, "What's it called?"

"I don't know," she said. "It was my aunt's."

I bought it. I think I thought it was me in the picture. And I wanted to know what she was looking at so intently. Remember, I was 19—the age when you're desperate to set your face in the right direction.

I took it to school that fall and asked a friend in the fine arts department what he knew.

"It's a Breton. Just a print. He was a French Realist painter in the 19th century."

"What's it called?"

"I don't remember."

So I looked it up.

It's called The Song of the Lark.

And that explains the look on her face.

I knew I recognized it in my own.

Beautiful song.