Steady, hard rain blurring the transition from night to day. How much silence there’d be if it were snow. How much more light.
Plummer’s Hollow
Damp and not as cold. A squirrel loses a persistent follower in a treetop maze. The risen sun almost breaks through the clouds.
Cold rain. The last scrap of December’s snow in the yard has shrunk to the size of a handkerchief. A back-and-forth between a titmouse and a chickadee.
Coyotes yipping up on the ridge before dawn. I try to guess the weather based a jet’s contrail—not too long—in the faint light of a crescent moon.
Cold (20F/-7C) and clear. The half-moon is an ear cocked to the west, where sunrise spreads down the ridge like an orange rash.
In the pre-dawn darkness, something is barking up on the ridge—a disconsolate sound, nearly inaudible over the bitter wind.
Treetops rock and sway as the dawn sky shuffles patches of darkness and patches of light. The inevitable crow.
Fog prolongs the dawn well past sunrise. How long will squirrels keep scolding after a cat has slunk away? Ten minutes and counting.
Still air and a heavy frost. A pair of ravens fly side by side over the porch, one calling like a crow—falsetto—the other like a death rattle.
Overcast but bright, and very quiet apart from the stream’s gurgle. Two squirrels seem to be hanging out, but only one acts amorous—the other remains focused on her walnut.
The ground is white again. Bright spots in the clouds that could be moon or dawn. The deep breathing of the pines.
Heavy gray sky. A screech owl’s descending quaver. And then it’s sunrise, according to my phone and the crows.
Overcast and quiet, with a fresh dusting of snow. A squirrel loses its nerve and backs off from a death-defying leap.
A few flakes of snow. Valley sounds eddy on the wind. The sun makes an appearance among the ridgetop trees.