Monthly Archives: March 2008

Dad reports that when he went outside around 8:00, a gray fox was sitting in the driveway. They watched each other for more than a minute.

The sky—so much more nuanced and interesting than yesterday’s clear blue! The light—so much blander! A zero-sum game between earth and sky.

Cold but clear. Two crows are arguing: the one caws, the other makes that strange scraping rattle, like a sound effect from a horror film.

Rain overnight has reduced our Good Friday snow to a lacy patchwork in the woods, so much cleaner and paler than the old snows of winter.

Clear and cold. A song sparrow sings half again faster than usual—”Hip hip hurrah boys, spring is here!”—as if he really means it this time.

At dawn, I watch the moonlight fading into the snow like the light going out of the eyes of a dying creature. The gurgle of the stream.

Windy and cold. The last three dots of snow visible from the porch have disappeared in the night. Overhead, a small window opens onto blue.

One degree above freezing, and something part-way between rain and snow is coming down, already half-melted, making an audible shush.

First crystal-clear morning in weeks. I sit watching the sunlight move through the trees and a distant jet trailed by nothing but its roar.

Yellow sun in an overcast sky: how is this possible? It lasts for a couple minutes before fading into a bright smudge in a net of branches.

Bare ground now predominates in the woods, and the ditches are loud with snowmelt. Two gangs of crows meet in the air, yelling, circling.

Winter’s back! My white plastic stack chair lies upside-down at the end of the porch. The snowpack has gone from quicksand back to granite.

Back below freezing. Some four to five inches of snowpack remain, but every tree stands at the center of a dark wheel of melted earth.

A sky of shifting gray. This is basement-flooding weather. I crack out the harmonica, hoping that no one will hear it above the creek.

An hour before dawn, the new-fallen snow glows yellow with the light from town. The crescent moon appears through a hole in the clouds.