Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow
A cold wind and enough clouds to keep frost at bay, though I doubt the tender young leaves and blossoms will be so lucky tonight. A winter wren burbles by the springhouse. High on the trunk of the big tulip tree, the white breast of a brown creeper inches skyward.
Brick-red clouds barely move as a relentless wind rummages through the trees and shrubs on the ridgeside. A thin slice of moon gets lost among tossing limbs.
Thaw. The snowpack has shrunk by about half, and the snowplowed banks that flank the road have opened their dark dirt hearts. The gray sky turns faintly pink as the wind picks up.
Bright and bitter cold, with a wind obsessively rearranging the snow. A ragged oak leaf comes tumbling out of the woods and skitters up the road, following a stripe of sunlight.
Wind hissing in the pines. A titmouse’s monotonous call. The distant tone cluster of a train horn. A white-breasted nuthatch pipes up.
Quiet except for the wingbeats of a raven. When the icy breeze dies, my breath begins to freeze to my glasses. Sun-sparkles in the snow fall victim to a bank of clouds.
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.
Last night’s snow is still falling as wind sweeps through the forest, shaking the trees down. Meltwater drips from the porch roof. Rhododendron leaves, no longer tightly curled against the cold, shimmer in the sun.
Unable to read due to flying snow, I start a collection of asterisks in my lap. When the wind dies, I can hear my mother yelling at the squirrels.
An hour past sunrise, the clouds are darker closer to the horizon. Three crows are having an argument in the treetops that ends with one of them angrily leaving the premises. The hiss of wind.
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.
I have to sweep three inches of snow off the porch before I can sit down, and when I do, flakes of great size land on my lap—little throwing stars a quarter-inch across. When the wind drops, I can hear the Carolina wren.
Bare trees dance wildly in the wind, branches clacking like castanets. Snowmelt dripping from the roof flies back up toward the fast-moving clouds.
A heavily overcast Christmas morning. With the hum of industry stilled, I can hear the wind in the pines a hundred yards off—a sleeper’s sudden, long sigh.