Monday September 01, 2008

Dave Bonta September 1, 2008

A cool, clear autumn morning. Every few minutes, another alarm call breaks the silence: pileated woodpecker. Bluejays. A frantic squirrel.

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Clear and bitter cold (-11°C) but also fabulous—the icy snow covered with glitter where the sun stripes it, blazing through the trees. …

Storm past, the temperature is plunging, just as they predicted. The new icicles aren't even done dripping. They sway in the bitter wind. …

Just above freezing but it feels like a day at the beach—sun on white sand, a steady breeze, the surf-like hiss of pines, a jay for a gull. …

Blue jays jeering in the steady rain. In January. One more thing that doesn't feel right on a day when the world is out of joint. …

Two degrees below freezing, and the sky an almost uniform white except for a wrinkling in the east, like the brow of a corpse. Two crows. …

Brown patches in the yard where deer have pawed the snow aside to eat myrtle. An oak leaf curled like a stillborn spirals down from the sky. …

The sound of the wind up on the ridge mingles with the sound of trains in the valley until it's almost impossible to tell them apart. …

Cold—the porch floorboards pop under my feet. Real snow at last! The rising sun stretches two faint fingers across the driveway. …

Juncos hop on the icy snow between the cattails where a rabbit disappeared fifteen minutes earlier, taking the darkness with it. …

Cold and clear at sunrise. Two ravens following the ridge croak in unison, their wings almost touching. A squirrel descends the springhouse. …

Clear and cold at dawn, with a crescent moon tangled in the treetops. A tiny white prayer flag flutters from a branch: some vacant cocoon. …

Very cold. The woods seem unusually lifeless, and there's a new creaking sound with every breeze. After a while, I realize: no squirrels. …

The Morning Porch/Patio