Cold. With the heavy inversion layer, a jay in the yard who sounds as if he’s practicing scales must compete with the whine of tires on I-99.
cold
The dial thermometer’s red arrow has just missed 0°C. A black tiger moth caterpillar is curled by the stoop like a dropped comma.
Cold, with an icy breeze that creeps under both my hoods. A dusting of snow. The distant sound of a door slamming shut.
-12°C with a wind. A raven high overhead is having, by the sound of it, a splendid time. I pull a second hood over my hat.
A skim of wet snow came in with the cold front. The big dial thermometer shivers on the wall—vibrations from the furnace under the floor.
Overcast and bitter cold. A Carolina wren comes out from under the house and rummages in the dry leaves behind the oil tanks.
Bright sun, bone-chilling wind. The hillside has lost its white blanket, which makes it feel even colder. The clouds are again worlds apart.
Snow fine as fingerprint powder; it’s almost zero. Two cardinals and a jay in the crabapple tree wait their turn to drink from the spring.
Through my thick hat I can hear wind hissing in the pines, the moan of an amorous squirrel, a tree popping from the cold—loud as a gunshot.
Take one polar vortex. Add westerly winds, seasoned lightly with snow. Stir in some birds and trees. Heat with a star 93 million miles away.
The wind has died; it’s zero. Through my balaclava and hood I can hear the excited chirps of juncos on the plowed road foraging for grit.
Storm past, the temperature is plunging, just as they predicted. The new icicles aren’t even done dripping. They sway in the bitter wind.
The thermometer’s arrow nudges past 32 in the sun, but the wind’s still cold, and the damp soil at the woods’ edge glitters with needle ice.
Cold deep as the sky’s blue, but the creek still sings its thaw song. Each dead grass clump is a Mecca for the fragmentary trails of birds.