I think it’s partly because the hillside is covered with evergreen laurel that this phenomenon of a white ground still seems so surreal.
2012
January 24, 2012
Five degrees above freezing; a steady tap of meltwater on the porch roof. Crows. A blue, eye-shaped hole in the clouds eases shut.
January 23, 2012
Deer have been eating the wild rosebush again, and the yard is a maze of rabbit tracks. The fog lifts for a minute, then returns.
January 22, 2012
The dark-eyed juncos flock to the two dark wounds in all this white: the plowed road’s bare stone and the thin, quiet trickle of a stream.
January 21, 2012
Fresh, deep snow on all the outstretched branches at the woods’ edge—those trees that have always hungered for an extra helping of light.
January 20, 2012
Cold—the porch floorboards pop under my feet. Real snow at last! The rising sun stretches two faint fingers across the driveway.
January 19, 2012
Each blanketing of snow so far this winter has happened while we slept. How superstitious to insist that it all must’ve fallen from the sky!
January 18, 2012
Trees rock and sway, infiltrated by snowflakes flying this way and that. From deep in the lilac, the wandering warble of a tree sparrow.
January 17, 2012
Cold rain drips in the pre-dawn darkness. The wail of a locomotive sounds frighteningly close and full of an obscure, mechanical longing.
January 16, 2012
My new glasses have some sort of prismatic coating. I turn my head and see a rainbow-banded sun rising east-northeast among the pines.
January 15, 2012
I bring no hat brim or sunglasses to my front-porch tete-a-tete with the sun, grateful on such a cold morning for any display of warmth.
January 14, 2012
An hour before dawn, the half-moon is a sideways emoticon among a scatter of bright pixels. A screensaver takes over and the yard goes dark.
January 13, 2012
Wind-driven snow; I draw my hood tight. On the wall behind me, the thermometer’s big red arrow inches left like a clock running backward.
January 12, 2012
Cool and damp. The low-hanging clouds catch on the treetops. Crows signal their locations with almost every wingbeat.