Cloudy and unseasonably warm at sunrise. My head throbs from watching election returns. A small buck walks by below the house sporting a single spike of antler—a unicorn.
11/5/2024
Up on the ridgetop to watch the sunrise, seven distinct layers of red in the smog over State College, itself hidden by another wooded ridge. A jay wakes up and screams like a Hollywood eagle.
11/4/2024
Another large oak has de-leafed, leaving more room for the overcast sky and its patchwork of light and dark. A screech owl trills one last time before full day.
11/3/2024
The sun rises an hour earlier, heralded by the usual motley assortment of sparrows, wrens and corvids. The stratosphere breaks out into a rash of clouds.
11/2/2024
A screech owl trilling just before sunrise sets the small birds off. The forsythia at the woods’ edge is once again yellow. The clouds turn red.
11/1/2024
After rain in the small hours, a clearing wind at dawn. Winter wren song issues from a hole in the road bank—a quiet torrent.
10/31/2024
A cloud that started life as a contrail turns livid as a cut then slowly fades to white before dissolving. A white-throated sparrow repeatedly sings a single, interrogatory note.
10/30/2024
Dawn. High in a red oak crown an acorn lets go, tapping the branches on its way down like a blind man’s cane.
10/29/2024
With no inversion layer, the early-morning traffic noise keeps its distance, like the worn-down moon cradling its heart of darkness. My rumbling stomach is the loudest thing.
10/28/2024
Red dawn spreading like a wine spill from a small patch of burgundy near the moon, which I watch with head held still to see it inch from twig to twig. A white-throated sparrow is the first to sing.
10/27/2024
Sunday silence. The moon tangled in the treetops glimmers under a heavy eyelid. A train plays rooster for the dawn.
10/26/2024
Clouds with yellow bellies and a clearing breeze. One oak leaf spirals down stem-first, hits the ground and bounces.
10/25/2024
Clear and still, with frost in the yard lingering well into mid-morning. A lone crow with the sun on its wings disappears off to the east.
10/24/2024
Clear at dawn. A pileated woodpecker rockets silently through the thinning forest canopy, and lands on the side of an oak like the angel of death for carpenter ants, elegant black-and-white wings folding shut.