A fresh scurf of snow on the porch. The trees with their moon-shadows stretching east like dark carpets rolled out for the rumored sun. All the old aches in my body. It’s cold.
snow
January 12, 2025
Not far below freezing. The sun appears through a keyhole in the clouds. A gray squirrel reaches into the snow and extracts a black walnut.
January 11, 2025
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.
January 6, 2025
The merest shimmer of snow against the dark trees. The shriek of misaligned wheels on a lumbering freight train. One of the neighbor’s hens yelling her head off.
January 4, 2025
At sunrise by the clock, the ground is still lighter than the sky. The wren who called once at dawn has clammed up. Snowflakes seem to have forgotten all about falling, and fly in every direction except down.
January 3, 2025
Cold and still. A tall black locust is loud with squirrel claws. Snowflakes as fine as dust begin to fall.
January 2, 2025
Windy and cold, with snow clumped in every dip and divot. An icy creaking from the trees. The western ridge glows and fades as the sun climbs into the clouds.
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 24, 2024
A fresh half-inch of snow turns the woods’ edge into calligraphy. Then an inversion layer brings traffic noise, a shimmer of freezing drizzle, the tut-tutting of a Carolina wren.
December 20, 2024
Fine snow slowing to a stop by sunrise and resuming 45 minutes later. It’s quiet enough to hear what the creek is saying both before and after it travels under my yard.
December 19, 2024
Overcast, but with more brightness than gloom. On the forest floor, a barely-there lacework of snow. Somewhere in between, a goldfinch’s warble.
December 17, 2024
A drumbeat of meltwater dripping onto the porch roof as the sky clears, just in time for the sun to top the ridge. My bootprints from last night’s walk have grown huge and dark.
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 13, 2024
The wind has dropped, leaving a dusting of snow, and the sky is a patchwork of white and gray. A rifle booms from down-hollow. The creek gurgles on.