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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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radio

September 19, 2024 by Dave Bonta

8:00 o’clock church bells and the fog has nearly all lifted. A nuthatch calls down by the stream, soon joined by chickadees. From my mother’s house, the measured voices of NPR.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black-capped chickadee, church bells, fog, radio, white-breasted nuthatch

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On This Day

  • October 15, 2025
    Bright periods alternate with gloom on a cool, cloudy morning, with an intermittent breeze paging through the tulip tree leaves. A sound like the clacking of a typewriter as a squirrel trots across the metal roof overhead.
  • October 15, 2024
    Three deer are running back and forth through the woods: flashes of white tails, the thunder of hooves. A small black birch nearly bare of leaves is a-flutter with kinglets.
  • October 15, 2023
    Overcast but brightening. Snow birds are moving through the half-bare lilac, exchanging notes. Titmice and chickadees forage in the thinning birches.
  • October 15, 2020
    Cold and clear. A sharp-shinned hawk skulking near the ground darts into a barberry bush to await whatever feathered breakfast may come.
  • October 15, 2018
    Just inside the woods a tall black locust leans at a steep angle, held up only by its neighbors. I remember hearing the crack, but not when.

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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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