An inversion layer at sunrise. Above the roar of traffic from over the ridge, a bluebird’s warble. The clouds flare pink and slowly fade.
March 2015
3/15/2015
Cloudy; cold. Over the wind, the angry cries of crows. A hawk bursts from cover and takes off across the field with three crows in pursuit.
3/14/2015
Rainy and cold. I am fascinated by the fog rising off the snow: how quickly it appears and disappears while barely seeming to move at all.
3/13/2015
The rushing stream in one ear, a song sparrow in the other. Smoke from someone’s burn pile. High up, a V of migrant geese heading north.
3/12/2015
A cloudless sky. Chipmunks and squirrels run back and forth across the melting snow. A gurgling chorus from all the springs and ditches.
3/11/2015
Warm, with a clearing sky. The aging snowpack is a map of dark, branching lines: not varicose veins but the tunnels of meadow voles.
3/10/2015
The slow melting continues. The sun is dim as a car’s headlight through the clouds. Scattered honks as a flock of Canada geese passes over.
3/9/2015
Yesterday’s melting has turned old footprints from pits into little hills. New tracks are muddy brown, fading out by the middle of the yard.
3/8/2015
Windy and bright. A hawk flies out of the woods and spirals into the blue. I sit reading a 2500-year-old poem, its heart-ache still fresh.
3/7/2015
A few degrees above freezing. Just inside the woods’ edge, three chipmunks in full mating frenzy race back and forth across the snow.
3/6/2015
Very clear and quiet. The ground is a blaze of white, like a second sky in which the trees float, anchored only by their shadows.
3/5/2015
It’s cold and gray, but a chipmunk has emerged from hibernation and sits on a log protruding above the snow without moving for half an hour.
3/4/2015
Little sign left of last night’s ice storm, except beneath the black walnut trees in the yard: long, brown run-off stains on the snow.
3/3/2015
I come out to find my chair at the end of the porch and turned to the north. A jay is doing his best to reply to a raven’s imperious croaks.