Pink lingers in the sky for half an hour past sunrise. Great gusts of wind roar through the forest and my eyes track the motion, automatically searching for the beast […] | Continue reading
The ground is white with sleet and graupel, and there’s a shimmer of rain from a sky like gray wool. A pileated woodpecker bursts out of the woods, cackling maniacally. | Continue reading
Cold and overcast, but with a broad palette of grays. Two geese go over, one silent, the other bugling non-stop. I resist the urge to check the news. | Continue reading
A gray sunrise, signalled only by the yelling of crows. After yesterday’s warmth, the ground is more brown than white. The wind picks up, clattering through the treetops. | Continue reading
A fresh half-inch of snow, and the ground’s as white as the sky again. From over the ridge, the roar of a Monday morning. A blue jay jeers. | Continue reading
Cold and very quiet, with a blue sky slowly fading to white. A vulture drifts past the sun without flapping a wing. | Continue reading
Temperature falling as the sun rises. The sound of wind from far off. A small scarlet oak that kept some of its leaves shivers a little. | Continue reading
Fog thickens as the rain eases off. The sodden snowpack shrinks, fitting the ground more closely, clinging to each mound and divot. | Continue reading
Mostly clear and mostly quiet. A squirrel summits a 20-foot-tall stump and looks all about. The three small clouds turn red. | Continue reading
Wind and thaw. Fat clouds sail over with bright orange prows and dark bellies. A dead leaf makes circles in the corner of the porch. | Continue reading
In the half-dark of dawn, the white noise of wind is made literal by flocks of snowflakes swirling this way and that. Rabbit tracks go under the house and do […] | Continue reading
Clear at daybreak with an inversion layer: tires on rumble strips interrupting the chatter of finches. The sun prickly as a porcupine among the trees. | Continue reading
A sunrise in layers of orange and gray makes the absence of color below in the snow seem absolutely surreal. Three crows fly over the house. The furnace rumbles awake. | Continue reading
Sunrise reddens a third of the sky. The male cardinal, clearly in his glory, holds forth. | Continue reading
Snow at sunrise: widely-spaced flakes falling from a half-clear sky for more than half an hour. After a while, I feel as if I’m witnessing some sort of procession, slow […] | Continue reading
Out before dawn. The roofline’s lone icicle glitters in the light of a moon grown thin and sharp. Out of the corner of my eye, a slight movement in the […] | Continue reading
Two below zero, and at least two gray squirrels are in heat now. I watch a suitor bound over the snow and into the trees, leaping from the twiggy end […] | Continue reading
Zero at dawn, and very quiet. Finally a nuthatch pipes up, followed by a junco. From inside the tall locust tree behind the springhouse, the muffled scolding of red squirrels. | Continue reading
A half moon all alone in thin clouds like a lost knife. The plank wall of the house behind me pops from the cold. | Continue reading
Snow starts in the gray dawn of a quiet Sunday, small flakes falling thickly, turning the road white again. Distant sirens. A squirrel crouches on a limb with its tail […] | Continue reading
Overcast with a slightly less gray patch in the east. The smoke from my chimney sinks to the ground and drifts off through the trees: some weather’s on the way. | Continue reading
Every morning should start this way, with enough snow fallen in the night to erase yesterday’s tracks: the proverbial clean slate. The sound of my neighbor’s plow scraping down to […] | Continue reading
Overcast, cold and still. A pair of amorous squirrels climb slowly up and down the trees at the woods’ edge. I take it on faith that the sun has risen. | Continue reading
A fresh scurf of snow on the porch. The trees with their moon-shadows stretching east like dark carpets rolled out for the rumored sun. All the old aches in my […] | Continue reading
The deep cold has returned, bringing silence and a bitter wind. The just-past-full moon slips behind a cloud in the west and never returns. From under the house, the sound […] | Continue reading
Overcast and two degrees above freezing at dawn, the inversion layer bringing traffic noise from the valley to mingle with scattered chirps and the whistles of dove wings. | Continue reading
Not far below freezing. The sun appears through a keyhole in the clouds. A gray squirrel reaches into the snow and extracts a black walnut. | Continue reading
A fresh inch of snow, fallen in the small hours, gives the wind new wings. A patch of sky turns salmon a bit to the south of where the sun […] | Continue reading
Trees creak and clatter in the growing light. Somewhere nearby, freezing sap is trapped and the heartwood bursts, loud as a rifle shot. | Continue reading
Gray at sunrise with a bitter wind. Just as I’m thinking that the difference between wonder and bleakness comes down to perspective, small flocks of snowflakes begin to appear. Like […] | Continue reading
Bitter cold with a wind. The happy sounds of juncos coming down to drink from the spring’s thin trickle. Overhead, a faint wash of pink. | Continue reading
The merest shimmer of snow against the dark trees. The shriek of misaligned wheels on a lumbering freight train. One of the neighbor’s hens yelling her head off. | Continue reading
Cold with a patchwork sky in which some pink appears and fades. The red squirrel scolds from its hole high in a locust as a gray squirrel leaps from birch […] | Continue reading
At sunrise by the clock, the ground is still lighter than the sky. The wren who called once at dawn has clammed up. Snowflakes seem to have forgotten all about […] | Continue reading
Cold and still. A tall black locust is loud with squirrel claws. Snowflakes as fine as dust begin to fall. | Continue reading
Windy and cold, with snow clumped in every dip and divot. An icy creaking from the trees. The western ridge glows and fades as the sun climbs into the clouds. | Continue reading
A gray sunrise, with the kind of tiny, windblown raindrops that started life as snow. Fire sirens wail in the valley, and I picture a house sprouting wings of flame. | Continue reading
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