Red at dawn and again at sunrise, in case old sailors harbor any doubts about the forecast. A cold breeze gets up my nose, and the whole hollow echoes with […] | Continue reading
Big winds are rummaging through the treetops for a dawn chorus of squeaks and groans. A bright wedge opens in the clouds. The wren wakes up. | Continue reading
In the clouds, where rain has nearly erased the remains of the snow. A slow and steady procession of drips gets interrupted by a crow. | Continue reading
The tiny, second-string leaves the lilac put out in September have yellowed, glowing in the fog and drizzle like the bright chirps of sparrows. | Continue reading
Clouds like a thick, gray quilt. The creek has sunk to a whisper, and the threadbare snowpack crackles like wax paper under the squirrels’ feet. | Continue reading
The holiday silence continues. A sharp-shinned hawk darts through the trees, barely bigger than a dove but with wings that don’t whistle. The sun comes out from behind a tree. | Continue reading
Half an hour before dawn, the deep Christmas silence is broken by the bugling of a Canada goose, flying alone under the low clouds. | Continue reading
A fresh half-inch of snow turns the woods’ edge into calligraphy. Then an inversion layer brings traffic noise, a shimmer of freezing drizzle, the tut-tutting of a Carolina wren. | Continue reading
Deep cold, with hoarfrost silvering every twig and dead weed. The sun clears the ridge and spreads glitter among the icicles. A white-breasted nuthatch begins to kvetch. | Continue reading
Very cold and still. Over by the springhouse, juncos are making their happy sounds. A mourning dove moans. | Continue reading
Bitter cold this solstice morning, with the half moon moving in and out of clouds—the trees with their shadows, and then just shadow. | Continue reading
Fine snow slowing to a stop by sunrise and resuming 45 minutes later. It’s quiet enough to hear what the creek is saying both before and after it travels under […] | Continue reading
Overcast, but with more brightness than gloom. On the forest floor, a barely-there lacework of snow. Somewhere in between, a goldfinch’s warble. | Continue reading
Sunrise past, thin clouds spread across the sky as if leaking from the flat-tire moon. The pileated woodpeckers are loud with what sounds like antagonism but could simply be joy. | Continue reading
A drumbeat of meltwater dripping onto the porch roof as the sky clears, just in time for the sun to top the ridge. My bootprints from last night’s walk have […] | Continue reading
Fog above the fresh snow—a paler shade of white. A gray squirrel thrusts her head into the ground and comes up with a white cap and a black walnut. | Continue reading
Gray and still, except for the creek’s trickle. A squirrel dangles from a low branch of the springhouse tulip tree, trying in vain to tear off a strip of bark. | Continue reading
Up with the sun, facing each other across 93 million miles of silence. It’s cold. I close my eyes for the brief afterimage: stark branches against a blood-red sky. | Continue reading
The wind has dropped, leaving a dusting of snow, and the sky is a patchwork of white and gray. A rifle booms from down-hollow. The creek gurgles on. | Continue reading
Bitter cold. A few small clouds turn brick-red. When the wind drops, there’s a staccato burst of pileated woodpecker alarm, answered only by a nuthatch. | Continue reading
A dark and rainy dawn. Will anything mark the hidden sunrise? Yes: three crows fly right over the house, yelling. The rain continues. | Continue reading
Damp and unseasonably warm. The sky brightens toward mid-morning, and the hillside’s coat of wet oak leaves begins to shine. | Continue reading
The snow on the road has turned to quaking puddles. The low rumble of a freight train is the only thing audible above the downpour. | Continue reading
The first sunrise above freezing in weeks. The sun climbs into the palest shade of blue as treetops sway and gyrate in the wind. A chickadee sings his springiest tune. | Continue reading
For twenty minutes after sunrise, my front yard seethes with juncos, all flutter and twitter as they glean seeds from old weeds. I go down later to inspect: winding lines […] | Continue reading
Windy and cold, with gray squirrels leaping through the treetops. Half an hour past sunrise, the distant bugles of Canada geese draw my attention to a patch of blue sky. | Continue reading
Wind and snow—a fresh two inches on everything. Sun-colored holes open in the gray clouds and swiftly close again. The cold creeps in through my coat. | Continue reading
After an orange sunrise, in the ordinary light of an overcast morning, the mechanical tapping of a downy woodpecker, the slow wingbeats of a raven. | Continue reading
A stray snowflake wanders down from the pink clouds, itself still white. Doves flock to the birdseed on my mother’s back porch—the silvery whistles of their wings. | Continue reading
Overcast and cold. Ten minutes before sunrise, a yellow rent appears in the clouds. In the distance, the neighbor’s chickens start up a racket. | Continue reading
Cold and mostly clear at mid-morning. The small hole down to the stream that flows under my yard is rimmed with hoarfrost, and emits a quiet gurgle. | Continue reading
Bitter cold and still at dawn, as the first silouette of a squirrel emerges from its nest of sticks and leaves high in the limbs of the big tulip and […] | Continue reading
Snow flurries at dawn, the ground more light than dark. A screech owl trills softly up on the ridge as the phone warms my pocket, installing an update. | Continue reading
Rain zebra-striped with snow; the woods more wet than white. A sodden squirrel trots down the road with a black walnut between her teeth. | Continue reading
An hour late for sunrise, I’m consoled by a radiance in the clouds, a sheen on the forest floor, a twittering of goldfinches. | Continue reading
Rainfall stopping by sunrise. An oak leaf comes sailing out of the woods and spirals down onto the porch. Holes in the clouds open and close like blue wounds. | Continue reading
Just as my moonlit shadow slips away into the dawn, the Carolina wrens who roost beside the laundry room door start up, with a brassy TEAKETTLE TEAKETTLE TEAKETTLE and her […] | Continue reading
Light rain at sunrise swept away by a light breeze, the monochrome sky accented by a pair of ravens, and down here a nuthatch going over the rules. | Continue reading
Snowmelt dripping from the eaves. When the sun peeks through the clouds, it becomes a bead curtain. The wren is singing. | Continue reading
Out before dawn with the first snow of the year landing cold kisses on my face. The ground glows pale in the darkness. When I get up to take a walk an hour later, my lap and coat shed their new layer of fur. | Continue reading
A red dawn, a redder sunrise, and a rain shower half an hour after that on the still-novel metal roof. I imagine a steel-pan drummer playing avant-garde calypso. | Continue reading
We’re in the clouds. They drum on the roofs and echo with bird calls. A dead walnut branch, scaley with lichen, lies in the road like a landed fish. | Continue reading
Sunrise reddens the western ridge from under a lid of cloud. Three white-throated sparrows squabble under the lilac, their chirps mingling with the distant cheeps of a truck going backwards. | Continue reading
Moonlight at dawn, only to cloud over by sunrise. A pileated woodpecker flies in a tight circle among the trees, as if lost, before launching himself out into the yard. | Continue reading
A slightly flat full moon in the west at dawn. A towhee calls from the dark edge of the woods. Freight trains labor up the valley. Just before full daylight, […] | Continue reading
Windy and gray. The only signs to distinguish the sunrise are a sudden outburst of crow calls in the distance and an upwelling of white-throated sparrow song. | Continue reading
Every morning should come with fog like this, and the leftovers of an all-night rain still dripping onto the porch roof, and bright lichen on dark bark, and chickadees. | Continue reading
Heavily overcast without a breath of wind—classic November weather. A small carnival of goldfinches moves through the treetops on squeaky wheels. | Continue reading