I feel like a salamander, slick with moisture from hiking in 98% humidity. The first flies are beginning to buzz about, anticipating the sun burning through the fog.
fog
Fog lingering into mid-morning. The sprawling lilac at the far edge of the yard is now more than half-brown with leaf-spot disease, brought on by this endless rainy season. The mullein stalk still follows its yellow flowers into the sky.
Out before sunrise, where the humidity has become visible: a thin fog through which I swim, leaving the porch for an early-morning hike to beat the heat.
Rain tapering off by eight. Even the fog looks green. Wild garlic plants in the yard are beginning to straighten, heads going up like herons trying to swallow large fish.
Thin fog, or just very thick humidity? But it’s still cool enough to enjoy the slanting sunbeams, the tired-sounding cicadas, the catbird’s jazz.
Rain and fog. I’m beginning to feel sorry for the 17-year cicadas whose one summer in the sun has so far been so sodden. I watch one go motoring past, wings mirroring the white sky.
The white noise of cicadas gives voice to the fog. I spot a second-year common mullein just beginning to raise her flagpole, velvety leaves wearing coats of cloud.
Sunrise hidden by fog, but already there’s a background buzz of periodical cicadas. A cerulean warbler sings at the woods’ edge, as usual, long after the wood thrush has lapsed into silence.
A damp and foggy morning. From the woods’ edge, the high, whispery notes of a bay-breasted warbler, here merely to forage on his way to the far north. A catbird launches into a solo.
Foggy at sunrise. A turkey gobbles non-stop from up in the field, and the woods ring with vireos and ovenbirds. At the edge of the porch, a gray squirrel nuzzles her almost-grown offspring.
Hard rain at daybreak easing off into fog. The ground under the trees is still more white than brown. The voices in the creek have increased from a symposium to a convention.
Daybreak finds each twig and weed encased in a quarter inch of ice. Every five minutes, another crack or crash from up on the ridge. The fog thickens.
Fog thickens as the rain eases off. The sodden snowpack shrinks, fitting the ground more closely, clinging to each mound and divot.
In the clouds, where rain has nearly erased the remains of the snow. A slow and steady procession of drips gets interrupted by a crow.