Bright and cold. I pull down my hat brim to see the shadows of the trees striping my yard. Valley noise is minimal but for one train horn, clear as a blast on an angel’s trumpet.
2023
February 10, 2023
Two pileated woodpeckers forage for breakfast, resolutely hammering as all the trees around their dead snags rock in the wind.
February 9, 2023
Nearly an hour past the alleged sunrise, the sky brightens and birds recover their voices, wren and nuthatch synchronizing like some sort of happiness machine.
February 8, 2023
An hour before sunrise, the yard is flooded with moonlight for a few moments, till the rift in the clouds drifts on to uncover a sliver of dawn sky, the last few stars.
February 7, 2023
The squirrel who de-husks walnuts atop the wall next to the lilac stops short when she sees that her piles have been swept away. She noses the spots, tail flickering above her like a gray flame.
February 6, 2023
Dull gray clouds since well before sunrise, but the cardinal is an engine of cheer. It’s two degrees above freezing. Anything could happen.
February 5, 2023
Full moon over the ridge an hour before sunrise turns fuzzy as thin, high clouds move in, fading out instead of setting. A dog barks in the distance.
February 4, 2023
-14C at dawn and very still. A sound like a rifle shot as some tree’s heartwood splits open. Two distant bugle notes from a Canada goose.
February 3, 2023
-12C with a wind. Which one of those small pink clouds is responsible for these snowflakes? My oil furnace trembles under the house like a wounded animal.
February 2, 2023
Clear and cold at the crack of dawn. A propeller plane comes blinking out of the east, banks and follows the mountain south, engine fading into a quiet trickle from the spring.
February 1, 2023
I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to this: bitter cold with the ground mostly bare. Chickadees are having a fracas. Snow drifts down from a clearing sky.
January 31, 2023
A skim of snow overnight; a front has blown in and the birds are so much quieter. But a cold, gray morning is fine for gray squirrel romance: a pair ascend a young tulip tree together, touching often, and descend the adjacent walnut tree, nose to tail.
January 30, 2023
The snowpack is holey again. A sunrise sky is visible through the trees on the ridgetop for just a few minutes until the fog descends.
January 29, 2023
Dull mid-morning light—the threadbare snowpack is brighter than the clouds. A titmouse sounds the predator alarm and a squirrel cleaning off a walnut climbs a few feet higher into the lilac.