7:11 a.m. (sunrise one minute earlier than yesterday). 12 degrees (cold lurks inside my jacket), wind WSW 2 mph. Sky: a faint blush across a rolling aerial landscape, silver-white and grandbaby-blue. Permanent streams: water against ice, shapes dynamic and endless, the Fourth of July in the lungs of winter, colorless but gorgeous. An adult pacifier for the easily amused. Wetlands: across the glacial marsh, deep inside the dull-green fortress, pileated hammers a pine or spruce or fir. One or two volleys per minute, ten to twelve drums per volley. Faster at the beginning and at the end. Carries a mile or more and may be given by either sex. A pileated answers, derisive laughter from the vicinity of the disemboweled maple. Pond: thick ice under a gelid crust of snow. A seasonal holding pattern until March, lentic version of the doldrums.
Up before the sun, raven calls, loudly and repeatably, black bird dwarfed beneath the cloudscape. Red-breasted nuthatch on bark-less aspen. Brown creeper on cherry. A squad of chickadees, squalling in the alders and hemlocks, recover stashed seeds and torpid insects. Three doves pick grit from the driveway. Flush when I appear, an over-amped exodus on noisy wings.
Female pileated chisels deeper into the roadside maple, an artist immersed in her work (literally). Wood chips everywhere. The tree may fall before she's through. Responds to her partner's love drums . . . delirious burst of wok, wok, wok, wok, wok, wok. The valley belongs to them. And now, as January rounds the corner, they proclaim ownership every morning.
Above the southwestern edge of the marsh, a hot-air balloon, quilted patches of black interspersed by a palette of square colors. Balloon's engine, a flurry of combustion coughs and then falls silent. Floats dreamlike above the pines. I pause, my attention hijacked, and lift my binoculars. A lone man stands in the balloon, dressed like me. Brown bear of a coat, balaclava, and mittens. Man and the raven look down on a wrinkled landscape, white with tired snow. I wave, grateful for human contact.
A hot air balloon in this cold??!! Brave aeronaut--glad you could at least share a wave! I've always admired ballooning, but usually in warmer weather. The risk-takers amaze me, as in this story:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160419-the-victorians-who-flew-as-high-as-jets