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.
cold
January 13, 2018
An icy wind; the ground has regained its white quilt. It’s as if the thaw never happened—except for the odd leaf skittering across the snow.
January 8, 2018
Cold snap over, fine snow falls—accompanied by the roar of traffic, as if all noise this past week had frozen solid and now is thawing out.
January 6, 2018
Another brutally cold morning. From somewhere under the house where the heating ducts run, the trilling of a Carolina wren.
January 5, 2018
0℉ with a wind. Over the creaks and moans of the trees, I can just make out the muffled cries of gray squirrels engaged in courtship.
December 31, 2017
Juncos foraging in the yard are puffed up twice as round as usual. The way we describe extreme weather: why not a heat snap, a cold wave?
December 27, 2017
Snow falling from an almost clear sky: scintillations small as pin-pricks drifting on the icy breeze. The crisp chirps of foraging juncos.
November 24, 2017
Despite the temperature—two degrees above freezing—a half dozen small insects dance above a branch at the woods’ edge, back-lit by the sun.
March 15, 2017
Bitter cold with a wind. I sit with feet propped up as usual while snowflakes needle my cheek and pile up behind the ridges in my jeans.
February 26, 2017
Cold weather has finally returned. Small birds are bathing in the stream despite the iron wind, shaking themselves dry in a dogwood bush.
January 7, 2017
Deep cold. Two chickadees invade the porch, fluttering noisily above my head. A downy woodpecker excavates breakfast from a resonant tree.
December 31, 2016
Cold and very still. The sun climbs through the ridgetop trees as slowly and bristly as a porcupine of light.
December 28, 2016
The cold has returned, but not soon enough to save the snow cover. The chipmunk darts across the road, cheeks puffed out with weed seeds.
December 19, 2016
January has come early: the icy snowpack hard as a brick, a squirrel already in heat. A pursuing male pauses to groom his face and genitals.