The cooing turned out to be a raven—later on, it was barking like a dog. Rifle season is over, and the mountain is littered with gut piles.
Dave Bonta
Overcast and misty. Beyond the scolding squirrels, a cooing cry I can’t place. I’m absurdly pleased with the echo when I break wind.
Two degrees above freezing and the snow has lost all its magic. The roof drips. Old footprints grow round and dark as spots on dice.
White ground, white sky, and in the treetops seven crows gather for a noisy meeting. One of them keeps chanting the same, 5-syllable phrase.
Clear and very cold. I hear squirrel teeth on walnut shell. The Carolina wren’s happiness motor turns over once, twice, then putts to life.
Two nuthatches trade insults from adjacent trees, yelling through their noses like warring doormen in their blue-gray livery.
The wind no longer howls, but now the merest breeze provokes a chorus of moans and shrieks. The oaks are finally almost all naked.
Sometime in the night the rain stopped, the temperature edged above freezing, and all the new armor fell from the trees. Snow in the air.
Quiet except for the distant moan of a truck’s brakes and the staticky sound of sleet, giving way to a heavier ordnance of freezing rain.
Scarlet oak leaf: blown sideways, it still manages to get a few spirals in. Bluejay: it takes me a second to recognize its solitary note.
Rising late, I get a faceful of sun. I watch the resident naturalist’s blaze-orange vest and cap appearing and disappearing among the trees.
“Crepuscular”: such a weird word, conjuring up ancient forests, twisted mossy forms. Not this dawn, filled with the noise of trucks.
To see the sunrise, I have to walk to the edge of the porch and look west: red ridge, the gibbous moon high overhead, a pair of ravens.
Shifting patterns of gray in a sky that has just stopped raining. A crow caws seven times. Suddenly everything acquires an orange tint.