First day of a dry high. Sunlight seeping down the trees. By the time it reaches the forest floor, the cicadas have started up.
2022
August 23, 2022
Clouds gravid with rain at sunrise. A wood thrush calls quietly. In the top of the tallest oak, a squirrel’s silhouette begins its descent.
August 22, 2022
Overcast with a shimmer of light rain. A red-eyed vireo still calls at the woods’ edge. The thud of a black walnut onto a roof.
August 20, 2022
Sun through a scrim of cloud. The first white snakeroot is in bloom. A Linne’s cicada rattles like a bad engine.
August 19, 2022
Half an hour after sunrise, a lawnmower motor in the sky: the curved sail of an ultralight glowing in the sun, heading south.
August 18, 2022
Crystal-clear, with leaves still wet from rain: I carry a chair up into the woods, luxuriate in the shimmering green and gold.
August 17, 2022
The sun finally struggles out by midmorning. Rain-dampened vegetation glistens like a salamander’s skin.
August 15, 2022
Drizzle thickening now and then into proper rain. The bracken in my yard glows in all the colors of decline and fall.
August 14, 2022
The third autumnal morning in a row, with clouds introducing a more melancholy note: nesting time is over, the sky road calls…
August 13, 2022
45F/7C at sunrise. I carry a chair up into the woods, watch sunlight seep down the oaks with color commentary by a red-eyed vireo.
August 12, 2022
Clear, cold, and quiet except for the wren. A breeze through the treetops: trembling leaves anointed by the sun.
August 11, 2022
Clear and cool as an October morning. Treetop oak leaves turn orange in the sunrise. All the crows wake up.
August 10, 2022
Milk-white sky and the white noise of tree crickets. A pileated woodpecker cackles to herself at the top of a tall locust.
August 8, 2022
Clear but with atmospheric haze, so the sunlight leaking down the trees looks murky behind the goldfinches’ purer yellow.