A fresh inch of snow, fallen in the small hours, gives the wind new wings. A patch of sky turns salmon a bit to the south of where the sun usually comes up. A squirrel runs along the snow-free underside of a limb.
gray squirrel
January 5, 2025
Cold with a patchwork sky in which some pink appears and fades. The red squirrel scolds from its hole high in a locust as a gray squirrel leaps from birch to birch.
January 3, 2025
Cold and still. A tall black locust is loud with squirrel claws. Snowflakes as fine as dust begin to fall.
December 27, 2024
Clouds like a thick, gray quilt. The creek has sunk to a whisper, and the threadbare snowpack crackles like wax paper under the squirrels’ feet.
December 16, 2024
Fog above the fresh snow—a paler shade of white. A gray squirrel thrusts her head into the ground and comes up with a white cap and a black walnut.
December 15, 2024
Gray and still, except for the creek’s trickle. A squirrel dangles from a low branch of the springhouse tulip tree, trying in vain to tear off a strip of bark.
December 6, 2024
Windy and cold, with gray squirrels leaping through the treetops. Half an hour past sunrise, the distant bugles of Canada geese draw my attention to a patch of blue sky.
November 30, 2024
Bitter cold and still at dawn, as the first silouette of a squirrel emerges from its nest of sticks and leaves high in the limbs of the big tulip and descends the tree, claws ticking against the bark. The clouds redden. A distant rifle booms.
November 28, 2024
Rain zebra-striped with snow; the woods more wet than white. A sodden squirrel trots down the road with a black walnut between her teeth.
November 9, 2024
One degree above freezing and very still. The sun’s slow climb through bare branches. The sound of gnawing rodent teeth in three directions.
November 8, 2024
Clear and cold. The red squirrel makes its usual racket while the gray squirrels leap silently through the treetops. The western ridge turns red.
September 30, 2024
Rain. The rumble of a distant jet. A squirrel crouches on a limb with her tail over her head, chiseling open a walnut.
September 29, 2024
The rain goes on and on for hours. I watch a drenched squirrel at the end of a branch lose his grip on a walnut. A small brown moth circles my face.
September 24, 2024
Rainy and cold. The tall goldenrod heads are bowed, flowering downward. A squirrel’s keening alarm for a hawk.