Sun-glare on the snow; a bitter wind. A crow mob up on the ridge disperses, only to return a half hour later to whatever they’re tormenting.
Plummer’s Hollow
Christmas has come like a vengeful spirit, roaring on the ridgetop, plastering the weather sides of trees with snow. A Carolina wren’s song.
Sun through cloud—enough to make the leaf duff shine in the woods. A chipmunk rustles. The distant squeal of a misaligned wheel on a train.
Steady rain. The fog retreats 100 yards up the hillside without seeming to move, trees like a flash mob suddenly emerging from anonymity.
The neighbor’s rooster crows a few times and falls silent, as if appalled by the gloom. Even a chickadee manages to sound querulous.
Clear and very still. Frost’s fine needlework on the dead grass in front of the springhouse, where a wren keeps up an agitated chirping.
Colder, with a brisk wind. The forest has developed a new creak, somewhere in the vicinity of the cloud-shrouded sun. It squeaks. It moans.
The snow nearly vanished overnight, and the bare patches of moss are shockingly green. The pines sigh and whisper like strangers at a party.
One degree above freezing and the hillside echoes with traffic noise. Meltwater drips from the roof, polyrhythms going in and out of sync.
Ground and sky are the same flat white aside from a smear of sun. Down-hollow, a mob of crows. A squirrel hurls itself through the treetops.
The yard is crisscrossed by fresh tracks of animals. A chickadee lands in a fretwork spandrel and peers intently at the old hornets’ nest.
A cold gray day. Juncos forage on the road and in the yard where a deer has dug. The dull knocks of a pileated woodpecker trepanning an oak.
Snow! Five inches of dry powder, and a light breeze sweeping it from the treetops: gauzy, luminous curls like falling smoke.
Cold, with a bitter wind. I find all the furniture huddled at the end of the porch, a chair smashed, the table on its back like a beetle.