Two pileated woodpeckers forage for breakfast, resolutely hammering as all the trees around their dead snags rock in the wind.
wind
2/3/2023
-12C with a wind. Which one of those small pink clouds is responsible for these snowflakes? My oil furnace trembles under the house like a wounded animal.
1/26/2023
Gray sky raked by swaying treetops, the wind made visible by squadrons of snowflakes flying this way and that. The sound of rodent teeth.
1/20/2023
Overcast with short-lived bright patches in the clouds. A cardinal sings a few notes at the time indicated for sunrise. Then it’s back to the sound of the wind.
1/14/2023
In the pre-dawn darkness, something is barking up on the ridge—a disconsolate sound, nearly inaudible over the bitter wind.
1/13/2023
Treetops rock and sway as the dawn sky shuffles patches of darkness and patches of light. The inevitable crow.
1/9/2023
The ground is white again. Bright spots in the clouds that could be moon or dawn. The deep breathing of the pines.
1/6/2023
A few flakes of snow. Valley sounds eddy on the wind. The sun makes an appearance among the ridgetop trees.
12/24/2022
-2F/-20C. Even under two hats and a beard, the windward side of my face turns numb. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas: bleak and frost-haunted.
12/23/2022
Back after a 10-day absence, I watch a front move in: blowing curtains of white. It’s as if winter had been waiting for me. Juncos twitter and hop.
12/1/2022
Treetops rock and sway in the wind—a restive mountainside. A few snowflakes fly this way and that.
11/28/2022
Mostly overcast and quiet, apart from the wind. A squirrel with an acorn in her mouth pauses for a split second at the end of a branch, then leaps.
11/20/2022
As cold as yesterday but with orange-bellied clouds and a wind. A tulip tree seed helicopters into the yard and rises up over the house.
11/18/2022
January weather, blustery and cold—and just as in January, two gray squirrels play amorous hide-and-seek on the trunk of the big tulip poplar.