The steady, insidious business of snow. A chickadee lands on a small branch and samples its line of white powder.
snow
December 13, 2013
After two days of soaking up sun, the sage plant’s fat, gray-green leaves have melted the snow-pack around each protruding sprig.
December 11, 2013
Hollow thumps where a rabbit dashes across the slick snow-crust, alarmed, perhaps, by the sun’s blinding path through the trees.
December 10, 2013
At first the snow falls straight and serious. But as it thins, they seem to lose their direction and wander back and forth, these flakes.
December 9, 2013
After 15 hours of freezing fog, every twig is spiky with eldritch feathers. A squirrel makes a small thunder by running on the crusted snow.
December 8, 2013
At mid-morning, before the snow starts its quiet infiltration, before the hard knuckles of sleet, the distant hysteria of a mob of crows.
December 7, 2013
New snow—already despoiled by deer digging for grass. I watch a red-bellied woodpecker inch down one side of a tree and inch up the other.
December 6, 2013
The last of the snow is gone, and the moss that lay under it for a week looks greener than ever. A distant train horn blows a minor chord.
November 29, 2013
A maze of squirrel and sparrow tracks between ice-covered tufts of grass glittering in the sun. Down in the valley, a siren starts up.
November 26, 2013
The silence of steadily falling snow, punctuated by the tapping of a downy woodpecker and the distant scolding of a squirrel.
November 24, 2013
Parallel lines of arrows where a sparrow hopped through the new snow. The sharp-edged shadows of the trees are a blacker blue than the sky.
November 15, 2013
The last patch of snow in the yard has shrunk to half the size of a handkerchief. Three chickadees explore the woods’ edge, comparing notes.
November 13, 2013
Cold, with a bitter wind. The juncos sound twice as cheerful as they did before the snow, twittering as they chase through the lilac.
November 12, 2013
The first half-inch of snow. A mink appears along the creek, looping over and under the snow-laden grass like a dark needle and thread.