Bitter cold. A few small clouds turn brick-red. When the wind drops, there’s a staccato burst of pileated woodpecker alarm, answered only by a nuthatch.
Plummer’s Hollow
December 11, 2024
A dark and rainy dawn. Will anything mark the hidden sunrise? Yes: three crows fly right over the house, yelling. The rain continues.
December 10, 2024
Damp and unseasonably warm. The sky brightens toward mid-morning, and the hillside’s coat of wet oak leaves begins to shine.
December 9, 2024
The snow on the road has turned to quaking puddles. The low rumble of a freight train is the only thing audible above the downpour.
December 8, 2024
The first sunrise above freezing in weeks. The sun climbs into the palest shade of blue as treetops sway and gyrate in the wind. A chickadee sings his springiest tune.
December 7, 2024
For twenty minutes after sunrise, my front yard seethes with juncos, all flutter and twitter as they glean seeds from old weeds. I go down later to inspect: winding lines of double arrows in the snow.
December 6, 2024
Windy and cold, with gray squirrels leaping through the treetops. Half an hour past sunrise, the distant bugles of Canada geese draw my attention to a patch of blue sky.
December 5, 2024
Wind and snow—a fresh two inches on everything. Sun-colored holes open in the gray clouds and swiftly close again. The cold creeps in through my coat.
December 4, 2024
After an orange sunrise, in the ordinary light of an overcast morning, the mechanical tapping of a downy woodpecker, the slow wingbeats of a raven.
December 3, 2024
A stray snowflake wanders down from the pink clouds, itself still white. Doves flock to the birdseed on my mother’s back porch—the silvery whistles of their wings.
December 2, 2024
Overcast and cold. Ten minutes before sunrise, a yellow rent appears in the clouds. In the distance, the neighbor’s chickens start up a racket.
December 1, 2024
Cold and mostly clear at mid-morning. The small hole down to the stream that flows under my yard is rimmed with hoarfrost, and emits a quiet gurgle.
November 30, 2024
Bitter cold and still at dawn, as the first silouette of a squirrel emerges from its nest of sticks and leaves high in the limbs of the big tulip and descends the tree, claws ticking against the bark. The clouds redden. A distant rifle booms.
November 29, 2024
Snow flurries at dawn, the ground more light than dark. A screech owl trills softly up on the ridge as the phone warms my pocket, installing an update.