Deep blue sky. It’s quiet. A chipmunk dashes across the icy snowpack as I catch up on news of the war.
February 2022
February 27, 2022
Deep blue sky; blindingly white ground. A crow lands at the woods’ edge and clears its throat. A Cooper’s hawk flutters off like a fast moth.
February 25, 2022
Drizzle falling on an inch of sleet: the ground is white again. A pileated woodpecker’s hollow toc toc toc.
February 24, 2022
A leaden sky slowly lightening toward midday. A wintry mix is coming and the birds know it: juncos in the driveway swallowing tiny stones.
February 23, 2022
Unseasonably warm and overcast. Up in the woods, squirrels nose through leaf duff newly liberated from the snow. A few drops of rain.
February 22, 2022
Gray with occasional showers. Distant crows. The face that I can’t unsee in the big red maple trunk with its expression of perpetual dismay.
February 21, 2022
Sun shining through thin, high clouds. An inversion layer turns the rumble of a freight train into something I can feel in my chest.
February 20, 2022
Clear and still. The stream has subsided from a roar to a babble: one inmate instead of the whole asylum. The first, skinny clouds.
February 19, 2022
A flash mob of snowflakes rushing this way and that. Over the sound of water, the wind: all hiss, no hush.
February 18, 2022
Windy and cold after last night’s freakish warmth. Up in the woods, a large coyote trots across the threadbare snowpack. The wail of a train.
February 17, 2022
A crow and a Carolina wren take turns issuing three-beat calls, as if debating: CawCawCaw. TeakettleTeakettleTeakettle. It starts to rain.
February 16, 2022
A clear start to a day due for clouds and warmth. A chipmunk races over the snow, tail like the hand of a timer that just went off.
February 15, 2022
I love these frigid mornings with their gift of silence. The stream gurgling out from under my yard. Nuthatches. Wren. A distant screech owl.
February 14, 2022
Instead of the gloomy morning I was expecting, the sky’s clear and there’s a fresh inch of dry snow. The crows are still exclaiming over it.