Walnut tree branches behind the house rock by turns, as if from the passage of some large animal, but it’s only this warm-blooded wind.
January 2012
1/30/2012
Where the fresh snow has just melted on the concrete walkway, a bright green blush of lichen. The nuthatch’s three nasal notes.
1/29/2012
This could be March, were it not for the late, slow-rising sun. The powerline right-of-way is a band of yellow light through the dark woods.
1/28/2012
The snow is reduced to patches now, and the stream runs loud. The book I’m reading says there’s no such thing as a pure white horse.
1/27/2012
The white flame of a deer’s tail bobs among the laurel. Another doe shakes her head, flinging rain water in all directions.
1/26/2012
Fog at daybreak, and a thin coat of sleet like coarse sand. From up in the woods, the sudden squealing of a squirrel fighting off a suitor.
1/25/2012
I think it’s partly because the hillside is covered with evergreen laurel that this phenomenon of a white ground still seems so surreal.
1/24/2012
Five degrees above freezing; a steady tap of meltwater on the porch roof. Crows. A blue, eye-shaped hole in the clouds eases shut.
1/23/2012
Deer have been eating the wild rosebush again, and the yard is a maze of rabbit tracks. The fog lifts for a minute, then returns.
1/22/2012
The dark-eyed juncos flock to the two dark wounds in all this white: the plowed road’s bare stone and the thin, quiet trickle of a stream.
1/21/2012
Fresh, deep snow on all the outstretched branches at the woods’ edge—those trees that have always hungered for an extra helping of light.
1/20/2012
Cold—the porch floorboards pop under my feet. Real snow at last! The rising sun stretches two faint fingers across the driveway.
1/19/2012
Each blanketing of snow so far this winter has happened while we slept. How superstitious to insist that it all must’ve fallen from the sky!
1/18/2012
Trees rock and sway, infiltrated by snowflakes flying this way and that. From deep in the lilac, the wandering warble of a tree sparrow.