Cold and still at sunrise. With more than a foot of new-fallen snow, the woods’ edge is an asemic text already being edited by squirrels.
Year: 2020
The slow, steady accumulation of dry snow. A raven flies low over the trees with something in its beak. A squirrel’s short-lived footprints.
Cold and quiet at sunrise. I walk to the ridgetop, clutching my thermos mug. Snow lingers in dips and hollows where the sun can’t reach.
It’s snowing: fine flakes wet enough to cling to the smallest twigs and give each bergamot stalk a tall white hat. Juncos twitter hosannas.
After a red sunrise, the sky turns dark for St. Lucy’s Day. But who needs candles? My outrage at our broken politics is incandescent.
Three degrees above freezing, but it feels balmy. A downy woodpecker descends a maple trunk, chirping loudly with each downward hop.
Weak sunlight — enough to melt the hard frost, make the ground glisten, conjure up a bit of mist and a Carolina wren’s hearty burble.
Heavy cloud cover. A flash of red from a male cardinal cutting through the yard. Gray heads of goldenrod almost shine in the gloom.
Light clouds in the east, dark clouds in the west, and everywhere the hush of the wind. A hawk goes by too fast for the squirrels to notice.
Bright sun, icy breeze. A few flakes zoom past. The only cloud is tiny and dissolves as I watch, leaving the sky to the fourth-quarter moon.
Cold with no wind; the few, small snowflakes float almost straight down. In the almost sunshine, a lone crow is trying to stir things up.
Cloud cover riddled with blue holes, though the sun remains hidden. From beside the springhouse, a higher-pitched, thinner chickadee call.
Patchy gray sky. A red-breasted nuthatch alights on a tulip tree limb stripped bare by a porcupine, a few bast fibers flapping in the wind.
The snow has shrunk to a few spots the low sun doesn’t reach. In the herb bed, the only white is a pile of clippings from my last haircut.