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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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sewage treatment plant

November 19, 2025 by Dave Bonta

An inch of wet snow, glowing like a second sky on every branch and twig. I catch a rare whiff of sewage from the treatment plant three miles away.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags sewage treatment plant, snow
January 10, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Overcast. A strong smell of sewage from the treatment plant two miles away. Juncos forage in the dead stiltgrass, chirping back and forth.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Japanese stiltgrass, juncos, sewage treatment plant
September 21, 2015 by Dave Bonta

The wind is out of the east, and, slight as it is, carries an acrid, chemical smell from the sewage plant and the quarry’s dull roar.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags quarry, sewage treatment plant
September 19, 2014 by Dave Bonta

A faint smell of sewage on the wind. A wren singing from atop the springhouse in the absence of a female supplies his own call-and-response.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Carolina wren, sewage treatment plant, springhouse 1 Comment
November 21, 2011 by Dave Bonta

No wind, but some slight motion of the air brings the sound of trucks and the sour smell of sewage up the hollow. The first drops of rain.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags rain, sewage treatment plant, trucks 1 Comment

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On This Day

  • November 14, 2025
    Frosty and still at dawn. A hunter’s flashlight ascends a ridgetop tree and goes out, subsumed by the crescent moon’s open parenthesis.
  • November 14, 2024
    Heavily overcast without a breath of wind—classic November weather. A small carnival of goldfinches moves through the treetops on squeaky wheels.
  • November 14, 2023
    Sunrise hidden by a layer of cloud. A white-footed mouse explores the corrugated roof over my oil tanks, its likely sickness shown by its lack of fear.
  • November 14, 2022
    Heavy cloud cover. A gray squirrel chiseling open a walnut squats on a low branch with its tail curled over its head for warmth.
  • November 14, 2021
    A blank gray sky, this time of year, is the easiest kind to read: snow, it says, in a slowly accelerating tumble of pure punctuation.

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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