Three deer are running back and forth through the woods: flashes of white tails, the thunder of hooves. A small black birch nearly bare of leaves is a-flutter with kinglets.
10/14/2024
Out before dawn. The trees rock and talk in loud whispers. Orion appears through a hole in the clouds, dark armor glittering.
10/13/2024
Cloudy at sunrise except just above the eastern horizon: the western ridge turns red, then slowly fades. Inversion makes the interstate sound much too close.
10/12/2024
Partly cloudy and almost warm. The jays are having heated conferences overhead, with strangled cries and jeers. A few more leaves catch rides on a passing breeze.
10/11/2024
Clear and still at sunrise, with a slightly harder light frost than yesterday. A crow yelling over the compost. A white-throated sparrow’s thin song.
10/10/2024
Clear and cold, with a faint patch of frost on the barn roof. Winged tulip tree seeds litter the porch. A red-bellied woodpecker tuts from the top of a tall locust.
10/9/2024
Clear and still cold at mid-morning. Sunlight flashes through thinning leaves shuffled by the wind, the sun’s own color more a yell than a yellow.
10/8/2024
Clear and cold. The red squirrel I’ve been hearing scold finally appears, racing up a bare walnut tree just as a deer hunter drags the first kill of the season out of the woods.
10/7/2024
Breezy and cool at dawn. Migrants trade notes as they explore the forest edge: towhee, phoebe, thrush. A lost passenger jet comes roaring overhead.
10/6/2024
Clear and cold, with more sky showing through the ridgetop trees. A raucous assembly of crows gives way to ravens—their resonant croaks.
10/5/2024
Before dawn, before the nearby quarry starts up, you can almost hear the stars glittering. In a dark enough sky, it turns out that Orion has a whole nest of stars for a head.
10/4/2024
More clouds than sun. A smell of woodsmoke. Stillness haunted by the distant sounds of wheels and engines.
10/3/2024
Cold and still, with yesterday’s rain still dripping from the trees, and fog shot through with sunlight rising into blue. Scattered chirps give little indication of the hordes of migrants brought in by the front.
10/2/2024
Another dark, rainy dawn. I can’t stop thinking of my last dream before waking, in which I had died and reincarnated as a deer. I had so many legs, and everything was delicious!