Red spreading from the clouds to the western ridge. Robin, cardinal, phoebe: the early-spring trio, joined by a downy woodpecker on percussion with a high-pitched dead limb. | Continue reading
Another clear, cold morning. Two mourning doves call back and forth, occasionally overlapping, as the sunlight inches down toward their perches. | Continue reading
Clear and cold as the moon’s searchlight sinks through ridgetop trees. Dawn stains the east. The cardinal wakes up, full of cheer. | Continue reading
Rain and fog. The birds call one at a time, as if auditioning. A sodden squirrel, grayer than gray, trots across the gray gravel road. | Continue reading
Cold and still. The rising sun shines straight down the old woods road to illuminate the whitewashed springhouse, just three days past the equinox. | Continue reading
Unseasonably cold, with the sun so bright and air so clear, the few clouds seem lost, like guests at the wrong party. Leathery old mountain laurel leaves look fresh and […] | Continue reading
Heavily overcast at mid-morning. I watch a squirrel surveying the yard from atop a stump, then loping over and retrieving a husked walnut from a tuft of grass. | Continue reading
Four hours before the equinox, the ground is white, with more snow swirling down. The miniature daffodils dangle from their stalks like deflated balloons. | Continue reading
Blue above the cloud bank blocking the sunrise. At the woods’ edge, white-breasted nuthatches are having a free and frank exchange of views. | Continue reading
Patches of blue. The mourning dove’s incessant cooing finally comes to an end, leaving the daffodils’ ensemble of horns to their silence. | Continue reading
The sun finally clears the one, thin cloud above the horizon only to disappear into a thicket. The robin has taken a break, so the titmouse holds forth. | Continue reading
A gray cloud ceiling brightens toward the horizon. A phoebe stridently announces himself to the echoey hillside and the daffodils trembling in the breeze. | Continue reading
Bright blear of a sun in a sky more white than blue. Its light reflecting off the window behind me means I am lit on all sides as I peer down at the first, miniature daffodils still in shade. | Continue reading
Thin clouds gone faintly pink. Under the endless robin song, a winter wren sings burbling accompaniment to the creek. | Continue reading
The sun climbs through bare trees while I’m not looking, lost in blue like the titmouse with his endless diatribe. | Continue reading
The ground is white again, and the trees sway like drunks as small orange clouds scud past. I sample the freezing air through a sunburnt nose. | Continue reading
Time Change Day! I for one welcome our chronological overlords, and I’m out at the new 6:30 just as the weather, too, is making a change, the creek roaring, snowflakes drifting down. | Continue reading
Rain and robin song. The sky darkens. The black birches look dapper in their gray-green suits of lichen. | Continue reading
After a bright sunrise, the clouds move in, one settling among the trees. The creek sounds more sober now, and here and there, the grass is greening up. | Continue reading
An hour past sunrise, bright spots begin appearing in the clouds. A lull in the birdsong. I notice the old lilac’s haze of green buds. | Continue reading
Thick fog that lasts for hours. Sunrise must’ve been that big flock of red-winged blackbirds and grackles crackling and creaking like old doors. | Continue reading
Dripping at dawn has thickened into steady rain by the time I get out of the shower. The robins, cardinals, woodpeckers and wrens seem barely to have noticed. It’s spring. | Continue reading
Another flat-white sunrise, today with the death scream of a rabbit. Crows, woodpeckers. The Carolina wren with his list of demands. | Continue reading
The creek still sings yesterday morning’s rainy tune, but by 8:00 o’clock the uniform white sky has devolved into patches of dark and light. | Continue reading
Rain clouds have settled in among the trees with their bodies like smoke. Wood frogs and forest salamanders must be stirring in their death-like sleep. | Continue reading
At the end of a tunnel of shining twigs, the rising sun. A red-bellied woodpecker whinnies from the top of a locust tree. The furnace under my house rumbles to […] | Continue reading
Leap Day. The trees sway and clatter; winter is back. A small cloud turns pink. | Continue reading
Fog full of birdsong. I look up from the page to a rumble of thunder that makes the windows shake. | Continue reading
Swans before dawn, their moonlit cries drifting down from over the north end of the mountain. A quiet trickle from the stream. The scent of thawed earth. | Continue reading
Mid-morning with the sun full in my face, listening to the roof drip onto the roof. A chickadee sings his spring song, and a little later, so does the song sparrow. | Continue reading
Red dawn with a moon like a searchlight sinking into the powerline cut. The cardinal debuts a new call with what sounds like a glottal stop in the middle: chee-er, chee-er. | Continue reading
The woods are far more brown than white after yesterday’s warmth. I glance up from my book to a splash of yellow in the clouds, lapsing into another day’s gray. | Continue reading
Foggy at dawn with sound out of the east—the quarry instead of the interstate. Gray-green lichens glow on the rain-darkened trunks of sweet birches all along the edge of the woods. | Continue reading
Overcast at sunrise, but the cloud lid lifts enough for the sun to glimmer through when it crests the ridge. Saturday’s snow is looking threadbare—a disintegrating shroud over the not-yet […] | Continue reading
Cold and mostly clear at sunrise. Long before the sun clears the ridge, the bright red cardinal is tapping at all my windows. | Continue reading
In the rising sun’s slow shadow-play projected onto the snow, sleeping trees drift on a sea of glitter. A visitation of wings. | Continue reading
Cold and still at sunrise. A chipmunk pops up from under the house and scuttles over to the stone wall, where it stops to watch the clouds turn colors. | Continue reading
Through two hats and a hood, the wind’s bitter whisper reaches my ear. Odd moans and creaking sounds issue from the trees, whose dark silhouettes stretch between two absences. Then first ligh… | Continue reading
Patches of blue sky at sunrise. A red-tailed hawk sits in a high oak limb, pale breast half-camouflaged against the snow that fell in the night. | Continue reading
Impossible to distinguish the sound of the ridgetop wind from the rumble of freight trains below. The stars fade. A small high cloud turns pink. | Continue reading
Very cold and still. The clear sky at dawn has gone white. Crows call to crows. The floorboards shiver when my furnace kicks on. | Continue reading
Cold and clearing off for sunrise. From some sheltered spot, a Carolina wren is duetting with the wind. | Continue reading
A filigreed fretwork of wet snow clinging to everything. From the valley, the wail of sirens. The cloud cover thins to a kind of brightness. | Continue reading
Overcast and quiet an hour before dawn. From the spruce grove a half mile away, a barred owl’s single Who. The stench of diesel. | Continue reading
Very still under a bone-white sky. A Carolina wren rummages under the house. In the treetops a gray squirrel takes an improbable leap. | Continue reading
Unseasonably warm and very quiet. Sunrise appears through a rift in the clouds: gold in the east, black in the west. The last five piles of icy snow look as out of place as alien spacecrafts. | Continue reading
A mottled sky half an hour past sunrise. It’s quiet. The dove who was calling at first light, as if it were March already, must’ve gone back to sleep. | Continue reading
Dawn clouds stacked liked a ladder of blood. Chattering nuthatches. A dove’s breathy song sounds far from mournful. | Continue reading