Fog thickens as the rain eases off. The sodden snowpack shrinks, fitting the ground more closely, clinging to each mound and divot.
January 31, 2024
Another gloomy dawn, a few degrees below freezing. The sound of an animal returning to its home under my house. Standing up to look, I tip over my mug, and stare at the small puddle of tea as whatever it is has a brief gnaw on a foundation beam.
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 31, 2022
Bitter cold. A garlic mustard skeleton hanging over the small hole in the yard that goes down to an underground stream is shaggy with frost.
January 31, 2021
The advanced scouts for a promised snowstorm. A squirrel gallops across the porch roof and back, sounding like a very small, unshod horse.
January 31, 2020
Two downy woodpeckers tapping back and forth. The sun almost comes out. Someone is out walking on the crusty snow—the crunch of their boots.
January 31, 2019
Through my thick hat I can hear wind hissing in the pines, the moan of an amorous squirrel, a tree popping from the cold—loud as a gunshot.
January 31, 2018
In the stillness, the rasp of squirrel teeth. Then the hollow thonk, thonk of a dropped walnut hitting the limbs of an oak on its way down.
January 31, 2017
Snowstorm. The porch, too, has been erased, except where some small bird’s meandering footprints have exposed the blood-colored floor.
January 31, 2015
Clear and very cold. The wind has erased all tracks but its own, and the trees’ etiolated shadows rock back and forth like trauma survivors.
January 31, 2014
Two degrees below freezing. Juncos bathe in the creek, darting into the currant bushes to groom. A house finch’s labyrinthine cadenza.
January 31, 2013
Blowing snow plasters my boots, propped up on the railing. The creek is living in the past as usual, roaring with last night’s heavy rains.
January 31, 2012
Walnut tree branches behind the house rock by turns, as if from the passage of some large animal, but it’s only this warm-blooded wind.
January 31, 2011
Thickening contrails stripe the sky. Two ravens fly side-by-side over the house, trading hoarse commentary. The blur of hoarfrost.