The forest is still a-flicker with falling leaves—astonishing this late in the year. Distant church bells. A chipmunk’s agitated ticking.
2017
12/2/2017
Heavy frost. When the sun strikes it, a faint mist rises from the yard. My father stops the car in the road to say he’s just seen a mink.
12/1/2017
The hillside glistens with last night’s rain, fallen leaves cupping thousands of thumbnail-sized puddles too cold for slugs.
11/30/2017
Frost on the bent-down blades of cattails. Two single-prop planes from different directions—their drones blending then separating again.
11/29/2017
The hiss of the wind. Oak leaves scud above the treetops in one direction while juncos and sparrows move through the weeds in the other.
11/28/2017
Distant church bells ringing the 8:00 o’clock hour—the Christian call to work. The dog stands up to have another sniff at the porch floor.
11/27/2017
Bright sun, cold wind. The blaze-orange vests of two hunters walking up the road: a father and his daughter who’s just shot her first deer.
11/26/2017
The lilac leaves have faded and folded into a thousand variations on an origami wing, bird or bat or moth, ready for their one big flight.
11/25/2017
High clouds move slowly in the wrong direction; the sun goes from blear to smear. Up by the barn, a large agitation of chickadees.
11/24/2017
Despite the temperature—two degrees above freezing—a half dozen small insects dance above a branch at the woods’ edge, back-lit by the sun.
11/23/2017
The holiday stillness is broken by the snarl of a chainsaw just over the ridge, the crack and crash. A glimpse of treetops thrashing wildly.
11/22/2017
Low and heavy clouds. A red-tailed hawk circling over the field flaps to gain altitude, ignored by a wind-buffeted flock of crows.
11/21/2017
Clear and still. A blue jay in the big maple drops down to the stream, and stands on the bank stabbing at the dark water with its bill.
11/20/2017
A skim of snow lingers in the shade. At the woods’ edge, a Carolina wren is holding forth while juncos forage quietly all around him.