6:11 a.m. 52 degrees, wind NNW 0 mph. Sky: low cloud ceiling bars everything about except a pair of low-flying crows, black and boisterous beneath a blue-gray blanket; seeing the moon, a day closer to half, and Venus, an impossibility; somnolent woods, not awakening any time soon, in free-fall shade. Permanent streams: upper, in need of a transfusion, more seep than flow, its song a pale imitation of rushing water; lower, a veery calls from a branch above the loneliness of damp rocks. Wetlands: stream courses green ribbons; everything else bleaches to yellow-brown as a print hung in the sun too long. Pond: thrilled by a juvenile broad-winged hawk, a stubby, egg-shaped bird, on a broken birch limb stares intently at the shoreline and brown, unrippled water; big head, short tail, a long way to go; buzzed by a chickadee, the hawk flies back one tree to a maple, perches, and stares, to no avail; a hairy woodpecker lands on the maple truck, scolding; the chickadee resumes buzz and anxious chatter, an inexhaustible supply dee, dee, dees; hawk departs for Brazil . . . by way of another maple a hundred yards farther uphill. My initial thrill morphs into longing; I want to join the hawk on an unencumbered road trip.
Labor Day fanfare: crows; blue jays; chickadees; more red-breasted nuthatches; pileated; hairy woodpeckers; Canada geese, a flock below the clouds. A catbird kvetches like my mother playing bridge. Apparently, red squirrels don't celebrate Labor Day; operose rodents as busy as ever, drawing ever closer to the driveway. Chiding squirrel on a pine branch that overhangs the road—chatter, chatter, chatter—invectives hurled at the dogs and me. Oblivious German shepherds sit on the sidelines and contemplate the vagaries of a Vermont sunrise . . . the wind, speaking in tongues, suddenly roars up the valley, ushering the clouds, setting limbs in motion and leaves dancing, chasing off the squirrel.
Phoebe on the pasture fence, tail bobbing, turns back to the wind. No two mornings ever quite the same; no two hours ever quite the same. The tranquility of impermanence . . . the rhythm and conspiracy of existence. Learning how to say goodbye. For me, this autumn, a virtual migration.