Thick fog that lingers for hours, cancelling most noise except for the muffled taps of woodpeckers. A red squirrel nearly walks under my chair, then thinks better of it.
Dave Bonta
The ground is white again, not with snow but an inch of sleet that has turned to slush. Snowflakes swirl through the air. The sun peeks out.
Cold, overcast, and quieter even than Christmas day. An hour past sunrise, the sky brightens a little. Two crows fly past, yelling. The gloom returns.
A heavily overcast Christmas morning. With the hum of industry stilled, I can hear the wind in the pines a hundred yards off—a sleeper’s sudden, long sigh.
Dawn. A raven emerges from a tall pine near the powerline, croaking and circling until his mate joins him. How is the wind this morning? Evidently just right.
Freezing mist—enough for drip-line percussion from the roof. The waxy chatter of finches up at my mother’s feeders. Down in the hollow, the thunder of a pileated woodpecker.
Clear and cold. Two red squirrels chase around the bole of the big tulip tree, chittering madly. Threadbare as it is, the snow cover still glitters in all the colors of the rainbow.
Cold, quiet, and mostly clear for the solstice. Small clouds turn blood-red at dawn, fade to yellow, then turn a lurid orange at sunrise. A red squirrel pauses at the edge of the porch to glare at me.
A cloudless sunrise. The ground is once again white, after yesterday’s snow squalls, and it’s very still. When the wren stops singing, I can hear a low gurgle from the spring.
Warm, torrential showers overnight have reduced the snow to a few, scattered patches. The clouds thin—a radiant break in the rain.
Dark and still. A shadow bounds over the icy snow of my garden—weasel or flying squirrel? Ten minutes later, the first sparrows begin to chirp.
Patches of blue sky open and close as snowmelt drips from the roof. An oak leaf cartwheels up the icy driveway.
Very cold and still. A fingernail moon slips through the trees’ dark digits. Dawn comes with a shift of radiance from the snow-covered ground to the sky.
Cloudy, windy, and bitter cold, but a house finch caroling by the springhouse sounds genuinely joyful — a soundtrack for the scattered snowflakes flying this way and that.