The white field is striped with tree shadows like a map of the Midwest, blue highways all running parallel. It’s impossible not to get lost.
March 6, 2010
Clear and cold. A silent pileated woodpecker propels itself through the sunlit upper air with great slow strokes of its shining oars.
March 5, 2010
Dawn. The Cooper’s hawk is back, his kak-kak-kak echoing off the icy snow. I scan the trees, a haystack of branches, for that fierce needle.
Sunrise. A bluebird sings from… March 4, 2010
Sunrise. A bluebird sings from the electric line, and suddenly it feels 25 degrees warmer. A ragged V of geese, too low to be migrants.
March 3, 2010
A wet spring snow clings to everything and coats both ends of the porch, where something very tiny has left an arrow-straight trail of dots.
March 2, 2010
A squirrel bounds over the snow with a newly disinterred walnut in its teeth. Behind it in the yard, a neat hole ringed with pieces of husk.
March 1, 2010
The sound of Monday carries on the wind over the ridge. Here, patches of blue, none of them yet coinciding with the sun. A raven croaks.
February 28, 2010
A cacophony of crows, doves, cardinal, titmouse, nuthatch, woodpecker, squirrel, locomotive, all amid the silent carpet-bombing of the snow.
February 27, 2010
The high winds have stopped, but who knows how much snow has fallen? An apple core tossed into the yard for the deer disappears with a thud.
February 26, 2010
The snow-plastered chairs are huddled at the end of the porch like sheep, and the end-table has lost its top. I pull two hoods over my hat.
February 25, 2010
A large red blot has blossomed on the garden’s snow. I find tufts of silky brown fur and three drops of blood in a line toward the woods.
February 24, 2010
A morning for woodpeckers: I hear the trilling of a red-bellied, the cackling of a pileated, and a downy’s steady trepanning of a maple.
February 23, 2010
Thick fog prolongs the early-morning light for hours. The cardinal sings spring while a screech owl quavers over the luminous snow.
February 22, 2010
That metronome-like sound—could it possibly be a chipmunk? I cup hands to my ears: no, it’s just slow meltwater. But the clock is ticking.