The mid-morning sun in the forecast comes with a scrim of cloud, a breeze, and a raven on the ridgetop going bonk…bonk…bonk…
wind
Overcast with bright openings and the white noise of wind, raising the dead leaves once again, making them fly.
Mid-morning, a lid of clouds slowly closes over the east. Caroling juncos fall silent. The wind picks up.
Wind and rain. In the gray-brown woods, two silent pileated woodpeckers flap from tree to tree, wings like a revelation in black and white.
Two pileated woodpeckers forage for breakfast, resolutely hammering as all the trees around their dead snags rock in the wind.
-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.
Gray sky raked by swaying treetops, the wind made visible by squadrons of snowflakes flying this way and that. The sound of rodent teeth.
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.
In the pre-dawn darkness, something is barking up on the ridge—a disconsolate sound, nearly inaudible over the bitter wind.
Treetops rock and sway as the dawn sky shuffles patches of darkness and patches of light. The inevitable crow.
The ground is white again. Bright spots in the clouds that could be moon or dawn. The deep breathing of the pines.
A few flakes of snow. Valley sounds eddy on the wind. The sun makes an appearance among the ridgetop trees.
-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.
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.