"Literature is my favorite subject." Mr. Wilson's eyes left my face as he launched into an introduction of the course. He said the word literature with only three syllables. Lit-ra-ture. I wiggled myself into a mostly comfortable position and stared crossly at the young professor.

“You might wonder, then, why I'm teaching history.”

I didn't think anyone cared enough to wonder, but we were all a little transfixed by his accent. He continued.

"Remove the first two letters off the word history. Now what does it spell?"

"Story," some eager beaver chirped from behind me.

"Exactly." Mr. Wilson nodded sagely. “And that's what history is. A story. It's someone's story. As a boy, I discovered that I would much rather read a book than listen to a lecture. Literature makes history come to life. It is maybe the most accurate depiction of history, especially literature that was written in the time period depicted in the story. My job this year is to introduce you to stories that open your mind to a broader world – a colorful history – and to help you see the connections to your own life. I promise to not be too dull if you promise to attempt to listen and learn."

"How old are you?" a girl's voice rang out flirtatiously.

“You sound like Harry Potter,” some guy grunted from the back of the room. There were a few giggles, and Mr. Wilson's ears turned red where they peeked out beneath the hair that curled around them. He ignored the question and the comment and began handing out sheets of paper. There were some groans. Paper meant work.

"Look at the page in front of you," Mr. Wilson instructed, as he finished distributing the sheets. He walked to the front of the classroom and leaned against the whiteboard, folding his arms. He looked at us for several seconds, making sure we were all with him. “It's blank. Nothing's been written on the page. It's a clean slate. Kind of like the rest of your life. Blank, unknown, unwritten. But you all have a history, yes?"

A few kids nodded their heads agreeably. I looked at the clock. Half an hour until I could take off these jeans.

"You all have a story. It's been written up to this point, to this very second. And I want to know that story. I want to know YOUR history. I want you to know it. For the rest of the class time I want you to tell me your story. Don't worry about being perfect. Perfect is boring. I don't care about run-on sentences or misspelled words. That's not my purpose. I just want an honest account – whatever you are willing to divulge. I will collect them at the end of the hour."

Desk chairs scraped, zippers were yanked opened in search of pens, and complaints were uttered as I stared down at the paper. I ran my fingertips down it, imagining I could feel the lines that ran in horizontal blue stripes. The feel of the paper soothed me, and I thought what a waste it was to fill it with squiggles and marks. I laid my head down on the desk, on top of the paper, and closed my eyes, breathing in. The paper smelled clean, with just a hint of sawdust. I let my mind linger on the fragrance, imagining the paper beneath my cheek was one of my carvings, imagining I was rubbing my hands along the curves and grooves that I'd sanded down, layer upon layer, uncovering the beauty beneath the bark. It would be a shame to mar it. Just like it was a shame to ruin a perfectly good sheet of paper. I sat up and stared at the pristine page in front of me. I didn't want to tell my story. Jimmy said to really understand something you had to know its story. But he'd been talking about a blackbird at the time.

Jimmy had loved birds. If woodworking was his gift, bird watching was his hobby. He had a pair of binoculars, and he would often hike to a high spot where he could observe and document what he saw. He said birds were messengers and that if you watched them closely enough, you could discern all sorts of things. Shifting winds, approaching storms, dropping temperatures. You could even predict if there was danger nearby.

When I was very small it was hard for me to sit still. It actually still is. Birdwatching was hard for me, so Jimmy started leaving me behind when I was old enough to remain at camp alone. I was much more responsive to woodcarving simply because it was so physical.

I must have been seven or eight the first time I saw Jimmy get really excited about a bird sighting. We were in southern Utah, and I remember where we were only because Jimmy remarked on it.

“What is he doing in these parts?” he had marveled, his eyes fixed on a scrubby pine tree. I had followed his gaze to a little black bird perched halfway up the tree on a thin branch. Jimmy went for his binoculars, and I stayed still, watching the little bird. I didn't see anything special about it. It just looked like a bird. Its feathers were solid black – no flash of color to draw the eye or brilliant markings to admire.

“Yep. That's a Eurasian Blackbird all right. There are no blackbirds native to North America. Not like this guy. He's actually a thrush.” Jimmy was back, his voice a whisper as he looked through his binoculars. “He's a long way from home, or else he's escaped from somewhere.”

I whispered too, not wanting to scare it away if Jimmy thought it was special.

“Where do blackbirds usually live?”

“Europe, Asia, North Africa,” Jimmy murmured watching the orange-billed bird. “You can find them in Australia and New Zealand too.”

“How do you know it's a he?”

“Because the females don't have the glossy black feathers. They aren't as pretty.”

The little yellow eyes peered down at us, fully aware that we were watching. Without warning, the bird flew away. Jimmy watched him go, tracking him through the binoculars until he was beyond sight.

“His wings were as black as your hair,” Jimmy commented, turning away from the bird that had enlivened our morning. “Maybe that's what you are . . . a little blackbird a long way from home.”

I looked at our camper sitting in the trees. “We're not a long way from home, Jimmy,” I said, confused. Home was wherever Jimmy was.

“Blackbirds aren't considered bad luck like ravens and crows and other birds that are black. But they don't give up their secrets easily. They want us to figure them out. We have to earn their wisdom.”

“How do we earn it?” I wrinkled my nose up at him, baffled.

“We have to learn their story.”

“But he's a bird. How can we learn his story? He can't talk.” I was literal in the way all kids are literal. I would have really liked it if the blackbird could tell me his story. I would keep him as a pet, and he could tell me stories all day. I begged for stories from Jimmy.

“First you have to really want to know.” Jimmy looked down at me. “Then you have to watch. You have to listen. And after a while, you'll get to know him. You'll start to understand him. And he'll tell you his story.”

I took out a pencil and spun it around my fingers. I wrote, "Once Upon a Time" across the top of my sheet, just to be a smart ass. I smirked at the line. As if my story was a fairy tale. My smile faded.

“Once upon a time . . . there was a little blackbird,” I wrote. I stared at the page. “. . . pushed out of the nest, unwanted.”

Images gathered in my head. Long dark hair. A pinched mouth. That was all I could remember of my mother. I replaced the pinched mouth with a gently smiling face. A completely different face. Jimmy's face. That face brought a twinge of pain. I moved my inner eye to his hands. Brown hands moving the chisel across the heavy beam. Wood shavings piled on the floor at his feet where I sat, watching them fall. The shavings drifted down around my head, and I closed my eyes and imagined that they were tiny pixies coming to play with me. These were the things I liked to remember. The memory of the first time he had held my smaller hand in his and helped me strip away the heavy bark from an old stump rose in my mind like a welcome friend. He was talking softly about the image beneath the surface. As I listened to the memory of his voice, I let my mind trip back across the desert and up into the hills, remembering the gnarled claw of mesquite I had found the day before. It had been so heavy I'd had to drag it to my truck and hoist it, one side at time, into the truck bed. My fingers itched to peel back the charred skin and see what was beneath. I had a feeling about it. A shape was forming in my head. I tapped my feet and curled my fingers against the paper, daydreaming about what I could create.