7F/-14C at dawn. The rifle-crack of a tree with ice in its heartwood. I peer like some ancient mummy through my layers of cloth.
cold
After another cold, windy night, might the ground finally be frozen? A tree wails in the darkness. From the ridgetop, long sighs.
An icy breeze curls around the house and makes the big dial thermometer squeak and moan against the wall: five degrees below freezing. The whistle of a mourning dove’s wings.
Clear as a bell and cold as a well, notwithstanding which the brown mountain is beginning to show through its thin blanket of snow.
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.
Bitter cold—and the silence that comes with it. I can hear a squirrel’s claws on bark halfway up the ridge. A raven croaks twice.
Cold and still for the opening day of rifle season. Distant booms set the crows off. The sun is a bright smudge in a sky more white than blue.
22F/-5C at sunrise. Every twig and leaf is lightly frosted. I watch my clouds of breath drift into the yard.
One degree above freezing and very still. I add my breath to the ground fog rising through yellow leaves into the sunlight.
43F/6C an hour after sunrise. Not a cloud in the sky. Black walnuts crash down at random intervals.
High-altitude murk gives the low-angled light a timeless feel. It’s barely above freezing, but the birds still sound ecstatic. Tennessee or Blackburnian warbler? That accelerating buzz…
For the third morning in a row, the thermometer hovers just above freezing as drizzle falls. Woodpeckers are already at work, beating their heads against trees.
Frost in the yard. How many tender young leaves will collapse and blacken at the sun’s touch? A goldfinch warbles in the treetops. A raven gargles.
Three degrees below freezing, but no frost. The dawn chorus seems reduced in volume, though the towhees and one tom turkey aren’t holding back.