33°F at dawn. The quarry is loud in the east, and it’s hard to shake the impression that I’m listening to the dull machinery of the sun.
A least flycatcher materializes in the cherry tree, finds three invisible morsels on as many leaves, issues a crisp che-bek! and flies off.
Through the darkness and fog, loud thuds from the black walnut trees that encircle the houses, a slow carpet bombing that goes on for weeks.
First light, and a great-horned owl is calling down in the hollow, the first three notes of each call drowned out by this rabble of a rain.
A song sparrow sings, and suddenly it’s spring again. In the front garden, under browning leaves, the witch hazel dangles spidery blooms.
Overcast and gusty, a day for flying leaves: those that twirl, those that circle, those that flutter, those that tumble, those that sail.
A pileated woodpecker hammers on a dead tree, resonant as it never was in life. I watch ground fog form and dissipate into a clear dawn sky.
The three black locust saplings in the old corral have grown several feet since spring, and now are beginning to yellow from the inside out.
Rising after daybreak, I search out scraps of darkness: a log sunk in the weeds, the rootball of a toppled tree, the sound of grackles.
Steady rain. Two squirrels passing each other on the driveway circle briefly, as if on an invisible roundabout. A towhee’s mindless chant.
First one, then a second Carolina wren pops out from under the eaves, perches in the fretwork for a second, and flies off into the fog.
A large flock of geese somewhere above the clouds. The purple asters in the garden are folded shut like sea anemones with overly long arms.
No yellow in the lilac yet, but a growing spectrum of greens. Random clatters from the new house site, where a green metal roof is going up.
Up in the field, five black cattle…
Up in the field, five black cattle—some valley neighbor’s escaped stock—emerge from the mist and pause at the sight of their shadows.