At first light, some large animal crunching through the snowpack at the woods’ edge. It slows, stops. I wait for daybreak: nothing there.
2/3/2009
2/2/2009
2/1/2009
1/31/2009
I can hear my mother yelling at the squirrels: Go! Go! Go! It occurs to me that snow is the opposite of water, slippery when dry.
1/30/2009
1/29/2009
A dozen doves take flight all at once—a confusion of flutes. From the almost-finished house a quarter mile away, the scream of a power saw.
1/28/2009
1/27/2009
The promised snowstorm has yet to arrive. The air is dead still, and an hour after daybreak, the ground remains lighter than the sky.
1/26/2009
1/25/2009
1/24/2009
Treetops sway wildly at first light, squeaking and clattering. A rabbit zigzags across the yard, pausing at each dark patch of bare ground.
1/23/2009
1/22/2009
Fingers of sunlight stretch across the yard. The resident naturalist climbs the trail into the woods with the aid of a long thin stick.