One squirrel leads another through the woods, pausing repeatedly to let it catch up. Only when a third joins in does it turn into a chase.
2013
February 12, 2013
This isn’t silence but a steady roar, ridgetop wind drowning out everything except for the wren, who translates that agitation into his own.
February 11, 2013
A cloud has settled in and delegated to the trees its responsibility to rain. Some restless animal gnaws on a beam under the house.
February 10, 2013
The sun shines through thin clouds; tree shadows on the snow are light gray rather than blue. A red-bellied woodpecker trills over and over.
February 9, 2013
Wind and a little new snow have softened the landscape’s hardest edges. The birches squeak like beginning fiddlers trying to get in tune.
February 7, 2013
Chickadees scold something hidden in the treetops. I can’t stop looking at a dried bromegrass leaf—its ornate curlicues against the snow.
February 6, 2013
Snowflakes swirl clockwise around the yard. A red-tailed hawk flies over, flapping hard, pale feathers almost invisible in the falling snow.
February 5, 2013
With less water, the stream is louder than it was yesterday. Three-inch cataracts splash into teacup-sized plunge pools.
February 4, 2013
The sun rises above a mass of cloud looming like the lost, real mountain for which this is a foothill. A wren pops out from under the porch.
February 3, 2013
A squirrel leaps through the snow-laden lilac up by the other house, chasing the juncos. Their high, tinny alarm-calls sound like laughter.
February 2, 2013
Cold and bleak. The clouds part above the ridge: a circle of blue bisected by a wide, shining contrail, the jet roaring just out of sight.
February 1, 2013
A squirrel walks slowly through the woods, searching its memory, then stops, digs through the fresh snow and comes up with a nut.
January 31, 2013
Blowing snow plasters my boots, propped up on the railing. The creek is living in the past as usual, roaring with last night’s heavy rains.
January 30, 2013
Dull yellow stripes in the fog: the rising sun slipping between ridge-top trees; thin tulip poplar branches chewed bare by a porcupine.