Wind seasoned with drizzle in the pre-dawn darkness. Between gusts, the distant whine of tires. A tree limb cracks, but no crash.
12/17/2023
Under a gray lid of cloud, nothing stirs. The sun must’ve risen at some point. The air smells of rain. There’s a soft gurgling from the spring.
12/16/2023
Cold and very quiet; I’m startled by a rumble from my own gut. The western ridge turns blood-red.
12/15/2023
One degree above freezing as the tall pines fill with sun. Two crows emerge from the woods, yelling about some old deer guts that must be just thawed enough for breakfast.
12/14/2023
Waiting for the sun at -8C. It’s clear and quiet, except for a squirrel rummaging through frosted leaves, climbing up to a low limb and beginning to gnaw.
12/13/2023
Just enough clear sky in the run-up to dawn to catch a few meteors, two of them nearly simultaneous. The absolute silence in which they appear, in contrast to the whine of early traffic on the interstate and the rumbling of a freight train, makes them seem more like a vision than reality. The brief traces they leave on my retina.
12/12/2023
Waiting for dawn, I scan the holes in the clouds for meteors. The north side of the springhouse roof still wears a small blanket of snow—more like a thin sheet. Any small beast sleeping in the springhouse attic must be cold.
12/11/2023
The western ridge is white with snow and more flakes spin down from thinning clouds, bellies turning orange against the blue. A crow kites overhead without flapping a wing.
12/10/2023
Steady rain—a gloomy sunrise. The big dead maple next to the road has the palest bark, its faces gone blank as masks.
12/9/2023
Red at dawn, and red again at sunrise for the last day of regular firearms deer season. Finally, at fifteen minutes past sunrise, a rifle booms. Then silence again.
12/8/2023
The moon’s bright bowl full of darkness rises through the trees at dawn and vanishes into clouds. Two great-horned owls on the valley side of the mountain carry on duetting.
12/7/2023
A dusting of snow—not even enough to bury the moss. Three gray squirrels in a high-speed chase circle the bole of an oak, claws on bark like castanets.
12/6/2023
Some breaks in the clouds around sunrise. The wail of a fire engine on the wind. Snowflakes drift down.
12/5/2023
A gloomy dawn lightened by brief scatterings of sleet. The muffled notes of a Carolina wren issue from a hole in the road bank.