My breath is so thick I can hardly see. Through the hood of my coat I can just make out a pileated woodpecker drumming a half-mile away.
Ten degrees Fahrenheit with a wind. An oak leaf skitters across the snow on its pointed tips, bumping through a forest of dead weeds.
The snow’s blowing from the east; I’m quickly covered. With my new white fur I will go crouch over a rabbit’s burrow, Nanook of the South.
A shimmer so fine it takes me five minutes to ascertain that it is snow, not rain. Dove wings whistle and a raven croaks: no dry land here!
Snow! Snow snowing on snow. Snow snowily snows. Snowy, snowier, snowiest snow. Snow snow snow! (Ice? No.)
Cold—the porch boards pop under my feet. A yearling doe walks by with her fur puffed out. But the stream’s gurgle remains unmuffled by ice.
Wind roars on the ridgetop; dervishes of snow in the yard. A loud rending—some trunk or limb—and I hold my breath waiting for the crash.
Bitter wind, and a skim of new snow fills in the dips and wrinkles, making the icy snowpack look young again. The screech of a jay.
Yesterday’s slush has set like poorly mixed concrete, and the road’s slick as glass. The Carolina wren sings a song I’ve never heard before.
In the steady rain, a squirrel grabs an unburied black walnut from under the walnut-stained slush and carries it back up the tree.
The predicted icestorm has yet to start. Long minutes pass between the distant noise of engines. A raven croaks. The stream’s slow trickle.
Quarry noise. What good are holidays if we can’t at least have some quiet? I concentrate on the dove wings’ one-note flutes, imagine angels.
Four does pick their way down the road, file into the woods, and surround a small rhododendron. “Stop eating that!” I yell. They bound off.
A screech owl adds its quaver to the minimal dawn chorus: mourning dove coos, finch and sparrow chirps. Snow and highway noise on the wind.