Still no frost. A Carolina wren putt-putts at the woods’ edge. From the powerline, a white-throated sparrow’s plaintive “Oh sweet Canada…”
October 2023
October 15, 2023
Overcast but brightening. Snow birds are moving through the half-bare lilac, exchanging notes. Titmice and chickadees forage in the thinning birches.
October 14, 2023
The pleasing monotony of a cold autumn rain, drowning out all other sound except for a low throbbing in the distance. Leaves fall drunkenly, careening this way and that.
October 13, 2023
Six degrees above freezing and clear at sunrise. The spicebushes next to the road are at their most luminous yellow. Chipmunks tick like asynchronous clocks.
October 11, 2023
Under a thin grin of moon, the maples reclaiming their red. Three crows wake up with awe in their throats.
October 10, 2023
Within the moon’s crescent, its dark bulk is aglow—a reminder that Earth is still, somehow, a source of light. A towhee calls twice and goes back to sleep.
October 9, 2023
An hour before dawn, the crescent moon hangs just above the ridge, with Venus blazing like a campfire through the trees. It’s cold. An inversion layer brings the sound of every engine waking in the valley.
October 8, 2023
Windy and cold. In the wall of leaves at the woods’ edge, the first few fragments of what will be my winter sky.
October 7, 2023
Rain clouds moving out by mid-morning, when blue sky appears, revealing a higher layer of cirrus moving west while shreds of cumulus keep flying east.
October 6, 2023
Heavily overcast—what the weather app calls “light rain”—with a crow yelling in the distance and a yellow-bellied sapsucker mewing like a kitten.
October 5, 2023
Half an hour past sunrise and the birds are quiet. All along the woods’ edge, yellow leaves are falling by ones and twos. The smell of burning plastic.
October 4, 2023
Half moon high overhead at 5:00, half-illuminating the ground fog and darkening the shadows into which walnuts thud down.
October 3, 2023
Moon above, mist below, and the treetops shot with sun. Jays call back and forth, acorns filling the pouches in their throats.
October 2, 2023
Sitting by the front door to enjoy the moon, I’m startled by a rabbit running between my feet in her eagerness to graze. Five minutes later she runs back to evade a weasel loping down the road. Orion emerges from the trees.