Ash-gray sky and an inversion layer making it sound as if the highway runs straight through the hollow. Above the din, a titmouse keens.
February 2018
February 13, 2018
A soft, cloud-filtered sunlight makes the white hillside glow rather than gleam. The rime-lined creek is still loud from yesterday’s thaw.
February 12, 2018
Two clouds cross, a high one going north and a low one going south—a sight so odd it feels like an omen, until the song sparrow sings.
February 11, 2018
An ostinato of dripping on the porch roof. The fog advances, retreats. Somewhere a deer snorts. Drenched squirrels bound over the slush.
February 10, 2018
Two degrees above freezing and I feel over-dressed. Icicles drop from the eaves. A Carolina wren sings his “tea kettle” song in a minor key.
February 9, 2018
Steady, fine snow—the kind that means business. A rabbit dashes across the springhouse yard and disappears into the crown of a fallen tree.
February 8, 2018
Mesmerized by the snow, after a while I forget that that steady twittering isn’t the sound the flakes make as they fall. It’s just juncos.
February 7, 2018
Steady sleet. A squirrel bores into the frozen earth to retrieve a black walnut, then schleps the battered, lumpy thing into the treetops.
February 6, 2018
The roadside scraped bare by the plow draws all the juncos, foraging and chittering. A house finch lands on a spandrel and glares at me.
February 5, 2018
The strong sun turns snow cascading from branches into gauze. In the deep blue sky, a distant jet, and the harsh, wild cries of a raven.
February 4, 2018
Fine snow settling over everything. From up in the woods, strange, high-pitched cries. Two crows fly off. The snow thickens.
February 3, 2018
Silence broken only by the wind for many minutes, until the fire alarm goes off in town: once, twice, three times rising from moan to wail.
February 2, 2018
The monotonous chant of a tufted titmouse. Clouds move in and seed the wind with small, round snowflakes, giving it another way to bite.
February 1, 2018
A few degrees above freezing; the ground’s thin coat of snow already looks mangy. I spot a tiny fly walking purposefully across the porch.