Mid-morning and the trees are starting to shed their latest coat of snow. A pileated woodpecker, too, comes loose, and flaps off cackling.
January 2018
January 16, 2018
Cat tracks in the snow disappear under the house. The Carolina wrens have survived another cold snap; will they be killed in their sleep?
January 15, 2018
In the weak sun, the icicles on the eaves are dull as plastic. A fine fur of frost coating the tree branches reminds me of my housekeeping.
January 14, 2018
Cold deep as the sky’s blue, but the creek still sings its thaw song. Each dead grass clump is a Mecca for the fragmentary trails of birds.
January 13, 2018
An icy wind; the ground has regained its white quilt. It’s as if the thaw never happened—except for the odd leaf skittering across the snow.
January 12, 2018
Rain has erased the snow. High in a black locust, a squirrel is biting off twigs and carrying them into a crotch, building a bed of thorns.
January 11, 2018
Warm enough to read outside. I look up to see a midge drifting toward the snowy woods. I look up again and it’s turned into a silent bird.
January 10, 2018
Mackerel clouds above then across the sun like a face consumed by worry lines. The caws of a crow echo off the thawed and refrozen hillside.
January 9, 2018
Just above freezing, but if feels balmy. Meltwater drips from the roof. A junco bathes in the slow, dark water of the stream.
January 8, 2018
Cold snap over, fine snow falls—accompanied by the roar of traffic, as if all noise this past week had frozen solid and now is thawing out.
January 7, 2018
A squirrel in the treetops pauses before it leaps, gazing, and loses its nerve. Below, bars of sunlight stretch across the pale blue ground.
January 6, 2018
Another brutally cold morning. From somewhere under the house where the heating ducts run, the trilling of a Carolina wren.
January 5, 2018
0℉ with a wind. Over the creaks and moans of the trees, I can just make out the muffled cries of gray squirrels engaged in courtship.
January 4, 2018
Snow in the air, and on the ground, a flock of snowbirds: hopping through the deer-scraped patches, dropping down to the stream to drink.