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Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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tracks

December 4, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Light snow falling at sunrise—enough to obscure the identity of a line of tracks emerging from under the house. In the patch of dead bracken, one frond sways gently on its stalk.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bracken, snow, tracks
December 1, 2013 by Dave Bonta

A rattling rain of ice from the pear tree out back where a squirrel forages. Bird tracks in the snow below the porch end with wing-prints.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags gray squirrel, icestorm, tracks
January 14, 2011 by Dave Bonta

A skim of snow on the walk is imprinted with winding, parallel lines of arrows like a child’s map of buried treasure, missing only the X.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags snow, tracks 13 Comments

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On This Day

  • October 17, 2025
    Cold and quiet, with a few clouds. A raven flies over the house issuing stentorian croaks, his mate following in silence.
  • October 17, 2024
    Each dawn this time of year brings revelation: the sky behind the ridgetop trees emerging piecemeal like a puzzle. And between the sun and the clouds there’s a new, transitional state: a crowd of yellow.
  • October 17, 2023
    Gloomy and cold at dawn. From the depths of the seed-laden goldenrod, the first, bright chips and whistles as the sparrow horde wakes up.
  • October 17, 2021
    Cloudy and cold. In the thinning treetops, a squirrel takes a wild leap to lose a suitor. Tulip tree samaras helicopter down.
  • October 17, 2020
    As the rising sun glimmers through the trees, birch and walnut leaves begin to fall, the first hard frost glittering on the ground.

See all...

Related book

Cover of Ice Mountain with a linocut of a big ridgetop tree.

What I do after I sit on the porch. One winter and spring's daily walks distilled into short poems with linocut illustrations by Beth Adams.

Header image: detail from Paper Garden by Clive Hicks-Jenkins (used by permission)

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