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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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flood

March 11, 2011 by Dave Bonta

The ground is mostly bare again, but the wind is salted with more fine flakes. Water thunders in every ditch. A freight train wails.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags flood, rain, snow, stream, train 5 Comments
March 14, 2010 by Dave Bonta

A pair of mallards—probably the ones who nest every year in the field—are dabbling in the flooded creek, here, there, like connoisseurs.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags flood, mallard, stream
March 13, 2010 by Dave Bonta

After all-night rain, the snow is almost gone from the woods, and the gray-brown leaf duff glistens, slick as an amphibian—one that roars.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags flood
January 25, 2010 by Dave Bonta

12 hours of downpour and the stream’s a torrent, water clear from running off frozen ground. Small clouds rise like spirits from the snow.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags flood, fog, rain, stream 2 Comments

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On This Day

  • February 7, 2025
    Pink lingers in the sky for half an hour past sunrise. Great gusts of wind roar through the forest and my eyes track the motion,…
  • February 7, 2024
    Cold and still all the way to the stars, which are just beginning to fade. A barred owl calls once. The hesitant footfalls of a…
  • February 7, 2023
    The squirrel who de-husks walnuts atop the wall next to the lilac stops short when she sees that her piles have been swept away. She…
  • February 7, 2022
    Not as cold—nor as clear. A song sparrow runs through his repertoire at half volume and double speed, as if rehearsing.
  • February 7, 2021
    Fine snow begins to fall. A squirrel is leaping through the treetops as if on some other white powder. Wakening nuthatches compare notes.

See all...

Related book

Cover of Ice Mountain with a linocut of a big ridgetop tree.

What I do after I sit on the porch. One winter and spring's daily walks distilled into short poems with linocut illustrations by Beth Adams.

Header image: detail from Paper Garden by Clive Hicks-Jenkins (used by permission)

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