The wind raises snow from the ground like a necromancer. Basking in the sun’s feeble heat, I watch the six-spoked wheels settle on my coat.
2019
January 24, 2019
Yesterday it was below freezing and rained; now it’s above freezing and snow is coming down: dilettantish at first, then in a mad dance.
January 23, 2019
A high-pitched train horn. The yammering of a red-bellied woodpecker. Almost imperceptibly, rain begins to tap on the snowpack’s icy lid.
January 22, 2019
Silent and glittery. Squirrels bound over the icy crust, passing between the trees’ long, skinny shadows like loom shuttles.
January 21, 2019
The wind has died; it’s zero. Through my balaclava and hood I can hear the excited chirps of juncos on the plowed road foraging for grit.
January 20, 2019
Storm past, the temperature is plunging, just as they predicted. The new icicles aren’t even done dripping. They sway in the bitter wind.
January 19, 2019
An almost unearthly calm, punctuated as ever by birds: woodpeckers, counter-singing wrens, a flock of juncos drinking from the dark stream.
January 18, 2019
Between storms, the sound of traffic. Between the white ground and the white sky, fog, and the haute couture of snow coating every tree.
January 17, 2019
Gloomy, but the birds seem excited, perhaps sensing an approaching storm. A titmouse fleeing a fight lands on a maple limb red with fungus.
January 16, 2019
A dusting of fresh graupel, and more flying past: like large grains of salt, or snowflakes which, tragically, are in no way unique.
January 15, 2019
Wandering tracks of sparrows and juncos in the snow below the porch. Beyond that, bare patches pawed open by hungry deer in the night.
January 14, 2019
Low sun on snow—even the shadows glitter. I’m feeling creaky, like the labored wingbeats of a dove starting up from the water.
January 13, 2019
Woodpeckers big and small are tapping on trees without disturbing the snow on every branch. Hibernating insects will never hear the knock.
January 12, 2019
As bright as the sun seems, shining through thin cloud, there are almost no shadows. A song sparrow sits in a spicebush, looking all around.