Windy, cold and clear at dawn. A song sparrow pipes up from the depths of the lilac. The ridge turns red.
sunrise
February 26, 2025
A sky of pastel colors occasionally graced by a bleary sun. Strings of non-migrant, local Canada geese fly low over the trees, restless, their cries still full of elsewhere.
February 22, 2025
The sun! A robin answers the Carolina wren as a pileated woodpecker hammers away at a hollow black walnut tree.
February 19, 2025
Cold, thinly overcast, and very quiet. The spot where the sun must be glows like a yellow door among the ridgetop trees.
February 11, 2025
Heavily overcast at sunrise. A meadow vole is busy with home improvement, popping out of the ground every minute or two to gather stiltgrass.
February 8, 2025
Heavily overcast. A vole briefly surfaces in the yard, all dark fur and blur. A screech owl trills on the ridgetop where the sun should be.
February 7, 2025
Pink lingers in the sky for half an hour past sunrise. Great gusts of wind roar through the forest and my eyes track the motion, automatically searching for the beast I know isn’t there.
February 4, 2025
A gray sunrise, signalled only by the yelling of crows. After yesterday’s warmth, the ground is more brown than white. The wind picks up, clattering through the treetops.
February 2, 2025
Cold and very quiet, with a blue sky slowly fading to white. A vulture drifts past the sun without flapping a wing.
February 1, 2025
Temperature falling as the sun rises. The sound of wind from far off. A small scarlet oak that kept some of its leaves shivers a little.
January 30, 2025
Mostly clear and mostly quiet. A squirrel summits a 20-foot-tall stump and looks all about. The three small clouds turn red.
January 29, 2025
Wind and thaw. Fat clouds sail over with bright orange prows and dark bellies. A dead leaf makes circles in the corner of the porch.
January 27, 2025
Clear at daybreak with an inversion layer: tires on rumble strips interrupting the chatter of finches. The sun prickly as a porcupine among the trees.
January 26, 2025
A sunrise in layers of orange and gray makes the absence of color below in the snow seem absolutely surreal. Three crows fly over the house. The furnace rumbles awake.