The hollow sound of claws on loose bark: another furious squirrel chase, this time in the dead elm. The chaser pauses to lick its genitals.
Rising late, I see the sun has arrived before me, burning through the haze, striping the wet woods with glistening paths, warming my seat.
A squirrel in a black walnut tree drops four nuts in a row. Clumsiness? Sabotage? Another squirrel comes running, and a noisy chase ensues.
Cool and humid. Up in the woods, two chipmunks start a border dispute, ticking in sync like bombs set to go off at the same moment.
The air is still and quiet. In the springhouse meadow, the ears of a doe appear above the goldenrod, pivoting like leaves in a private wind.
For the second dawn in a row, it’s 47°F. I watch two midges hover above the railing. A long blast of the paper-plant whistle: morning shift.
In the wild black cherry limb that hangs over the entrance to the trail up the ridge, red clumps of stems, a squirrel getting its breakfast.
I’m beginning to distinguish individual locomotives by their whistles. The majority merely say Look Out, but a few almost manage I Am.
Sun in the treetops. A doe and her fawn are consuming the future of the forest, one oak or tulip poplar seedling at a time. The doe burps.
The far side of the driveway is dusted in white—snakeroot coming into bloom. The poison that killed Lincoln’s mother, distilled in milk.
A still morning. Dew drips from the top roof onto the porch roof. Each birdcall—woodpecker, towhee, jay—is surrounded by acres of silence.
Sunrise comes with a soundtrack of grinding and beeping from the quarry to our east. Right below the railing, goldenrod bobs: a winter wren.
The lowest limb of the tulip poplar trembles as a four-point buck briefly fences with the leaves. The minor-key wail of a distant train.
The woods’ edge is at the base of a hill; all I see of the doe foraging under the trees are delicate legs and the spinning flag of her tail.