Rain tapering into mist and drizzle. A squirrel finds a black walnut next to the road, swiftly de-husks it and carries it away. The sky brightens. A goldfinch lisps a single note.
December 25, 2023
Heavily overcast, with nothing to distinguish the sunrise from any other moment, soft and gray as old felt in the nearly complete absence of human noise.
December 24, 2023
A few degrees above freezing, heavily overcast, and dead quiet apart from the spring’s low gurgle. A bluebird sings two notes and lapses back into silence.
December 23, 2023
Silhouetted against the dawn sky, a squirrel forages for birch seeds right where Venus was last seen, glimmering through thin clouds.
December 22, 2023
Half an hour till sunrise. The sky’s gray matter is deeply furrowed. The caroling of a Carolina wren briefly dispels the gloom.
December 21, 2023
The solstice dawns cold and overcast, with a small lens of clear sky on the eastern horizon. A thin, wavering song from the meadow: the first white-throated sparrow has woken up.
December 20, 2023
Clear as a bell and cold as a well, notwithstanding which the brown mountain is beginning to show through its thin blanket of snow.
December 19, 2023
Well below freezing, with a half-inch of snow on the ground and a wind that keeps turning the pages of my book. The sun appears for a second or two through a gray eyelid of cloud.
December 18, 2023
Wind seasoned with drizzle in the pre-dawn darkness. Between gusts, the distant whine of tires. A tree limb cracks, but no crash.
December 17, 2023
Under a gray lid of cloud, nothing stirs. The sun must’ve risen at some point. The air smells of rain. There’s a soft gurgling from the spring.
December 16, 2023
Cold and very quiet; I’m startled by a rumble from my own gut. The western ridge turns blood-red.
December 15, 2023
One degree above freezing as the tall pines fill with sun. Two crows emerge from the woods, yelling about some old deer guts that must be just thawed enough for breakfast.
December 14, 2023
Waiting for the sun at -8C. It’s clear and quiet, except for a squirrel rummaging through frosted leaves, climbing up to a low limb and beginning to gnaw.
December 13, 2023
Just enough clear sky in the run-up to dawn to catch a few meteors, two of them nearly simultaneous. The absolute silence in which they appear, in contrast to the whine of early traffic on the interstate and the rumbling of a freight train, makes them seem more like a vision than reality. The brief traces they leave on my retina.