An inversion layer brings freight train and traffic noise to mix with rustling leaves, crow scold-calls, a chipmunk’s metronome. My music.
I-99
Traffic noise from over the hill is deafening—the icy snowpack has become a sounding board. In the tulip tree, four slow, amorous squirrels.
Thin fog, as in the corners of a tintype. It seems too quiet for a Monday morning; traffic on the interstate is a faint, far moan.
A low drone of traffic from over the ridge. Half-blinded by the sun, I see the backlit wings of small birds as sudden flowers opening.
Sunny and warm with an inversion layer: the clamor of traffic from I-99 and a mist-filled forest. Filmy-winged insects begin to appear.
In one and the same moment, the howl of an accelerating speedbike, a train whistle, and the quiet anxious calling of a nuthatch to its mate.
We don’t hear much from the highway these days. What I hear: Canada geese off to the north, a train whistle, two kinds of crickets.
The distant gargle of compression release engine brakes. Dark clouds moving very slowly, as if deliberating where to drop their rain.
Another cloudless morning, marred only by the high whine of traffic. My neighbor calls with news of a bald eagle on the carcass of a deer.
A steady hum of traffic from over the ridge spoils the pre-dawn quiet, just as the snow on the ground sullies the darkness.
Cold with a heavy inversion layer. While traffic roars over the ridge to the west, the sun clears the eastern ridge, a silent howl of light.
Last week’s snow has shrunk to a scattering of patches the size of dinner plates. Crows yell back and forth above the din from the highway.
The walk is shiny with recent rain, and the west wind is damp and full of sounds from the valley: tires humming, the heavy thrum of a train.
A rare-for-summer inversion layer: throaty jake-break and tire whine, you sound like winter, that discordant note running under our lives.