Fog settles in, full of the labor of freight trains. Snow mounded up by the plow rots in the otherwise bare yard like a white whale carcass.
snow
March 24, 2018
Bright sun. After several days of freeze and thaw, the snow conforms to every bump and divot as if the hillside has been shrink-wrapped.
March 23, 2018
Blue shadows on the snow and a breeze with teeth. I test the snow by tossing out an apple core. It bounces rather than sinks.
March 22, 2018
The new snowpack turns blindingly bright as the high, spring sun beats down. Icicles drop on to the porch roof with muffled thuds.
March 21, 2018
It’s the absence of sound that makes a snowstorm so disquieting. A squirrel plows its way through snow-laden treetops—a slow-moving cascade.
March 16, 2018
Each morning arrives with a fresh coat of snow, but today’s is threadbare. For a minute or two, the wind is whiter than the ground.
March 9, 2018
New snow blown about by a bitter wind. A red-tailed hawk struggles to gain altitude, mocked by a blue jay doing its best hawk scream.
March 7, 2018
Pileated woodpecker drumming in a snowstorm—so loud, so outrageously red—here and gone. While the wet, methodical snow doesn’t miss a twig.
March 2, 2018
The wind that shook the house all night has dwindled to an occasional gust. An inch of snow plasters the porch and the east sides of trees.
February 19, 2018
The fog is a bad magician. Each time it lifts, it reveals the same trees and snow, the same skinny squirrels, the same two crows jeering.
February 18, 2018
In the shadows of the treetops, two chipmunks race over and under the three inches of fresh, wet snow. A chickadee sings his spring song.
February 16, 2018
It’s been raining for 15 hours; the creek roars. The snowy ridges the plow made now resemble the mountains I know, orphaned, deeply eroded.
February 15, 2018
After a night of rain and unseasonable warmth, the snow cover is threadbare. Moss glows green on the road bank. Waxwings’ silvery whistles.
February 13, 2018
A soft, cloud-filtered sunlight makes the white hillside glow rather than gleam. The rime-lined creek is still loud from yesterday’s thaw.