Deep cold. Somewhere up on the ridge, an oak’s icy heartwood goes off like a gun. Ten minutes before sunrise, the eastern sky turns blood-red. A Carolina wren offers the briefest of commentaries.
sunrise
Cold, windy, and mostly clear for the hour between sunrise and the actual appearance of the sun. Wriggling my fingers for warmth, I watch a small cloud acquiring a glow as it sails off east.
Blue sky, orange clouds, and the temperature so far below freezing, the slightest breeze turns my cheeks numb. After a while I notice the complete absence of squirrels.
A wedge of blue sky opens at sunrise. Four pileated woodpeckers in the hollow take turns drumming, two low, two high. Half an hour later, it’s gray and quiet.
Sunrise. A spirited argument breaks out between a raven and some crows as the sky’s ephemeral pagentry fades to gray.
A wedge of yellow light in the clouds for half an hour past sunrise. I’m learning to spot when a squirrel is about to dig up a nut: it stares off into space in one last effort to convince any watcher that it’s doing something entirely different.
A hole in the clouds at dawn fails to hold the whole full moon—a brief, bright searchlight. Later, at sunrise, a chorus of chiselers as gray squirrels work on their black walnuts.
A fresh inch and a half of dry snow, and the bitter wind that bore it now ushering a flotilla of orange clouds across a sky of startling blue. From my mother’s house, the murmur of voices on the radio like a distant surf, accompanied not by the cries of gulls but the chatter of house finches.
Cold, quiet, and mostly clear for the solstice. Small clouds turn blood-red at dawn, fade to yellow, then turn a lurid orange at sunrise. A red squirrel pauses at the edge of the porch to glare at me.
A cloudless sunrise. The ground is once again white, after yesterday’s snow squalls, and it’s very still. When the wren stops singing, I can hear a low gurgle from the spring.
Sunday-morning silence deepened by fresh snow, with flakes still flurrying about. A band of orange appears in the clouds. The furnace under the house rumbles to life.
Well below freezing at sunrise. A pileated woodpecker drums as if it were already courtship season. Two squirrels briefly touch noses, then back away and resume solitary foraging.
Heavily overcast, with a brief insinuation of pink at two minutes till sunrise. The fluting of tundra swans draws my eye to a high, ragged convoy just disappearing over the ridge.
Cloudless and still, except for the Amish men with nail guns firing into the roof of my mother’s house. The sun clears the ridge. A saw sinks its teeth into a two-by-four.