December 2008

A fresh half-inch of snow is enough to give shape to banshees towering into the treetops, which whip back and forth, shedding dead limbs

Clear and cold at sunrise, with gusts of wind and a roaring up on the ridge. Chickadees like yard-sale shoppers darting from find to find.

I love winter. I can rise late and it still feels early: clear sky, sun through the trees, the hollow rattle of a crow too angry to caw.

Rainbow at sunrise in the mist above the half-red ridge. I race up the driveway in my pyjamas, only to find the camera’s batteries are dead.

In the darkness and fog, the sound of slush being punctured and scraped aside. I can just make out the solid shadows, their many thin legs.

A screech owl’s trill, the maniacal cry of a pileated—everything sounds like a portent when the sky’s such a lurid red behind the trees.

The trees rock quietly in the dawn wind, ringed by shards of yesterday’s armor. Reflections of golden clouds glide across the icy driveway.

Freezing rain. A black birch sapling suddenly bows its head. As the temperature climbs, branches begin to shed their heavy decorations.

Juncos foraging in the snow. One flies up to the branch nearest to my chair and inches sideways, its down coat puffed out against the cold.

Fast-moving windows of blue in a yellow sky. The trees creak as they sway—it’s 5°F. A good day for walking, a bad day for standing still.

Snow whitening the lilac. And here come the cardinals to pose photogenically in the midst of it: loud and obvious red; subtle tan and ochre.

The ice is all gone, but the cedar next to my side door still leans away from the house at a 30-degree angle, like a giant green erection.

Sleet to rain to sleet to rain: the tapping on the roof above my head keeps changing pitch. Faint notes of chickadees, titmice, a nuthatch.

For the first time in weeks, there’s a slow gurgle from where the stream starts. Highway noise. The gray sky is gravid with bad weather.