6:58 a.m. (sunrise two minutes earlier than yesterday). 5 degrees, wind NW 0 mph (if the wind blows less than one mph, the National Weather Service designates the speed as zero.) Sky: linear clouds, more crowded in the south, pastel streaks across baby blue—rose, peach, pink, volatile as a youth. Permanent Streams: upper, ice-bound and transparent (again); lower, snow-bound and opaque, rock-hard and raucous. Wetlands: pileated drums north-end hemlock, reverberating across the marsh, deep, palpable beats, echoes of echoes, the morning's finest and loudest proclamation. Here Comes the Sun. Mindful of biscuits in my pocket, dogs wait patiently for me to recover. Grouse in the alders explodes, wings whirring and shouting, accomplishes what dogs cannot. Immediately, I'm brought back, jarred alert, chanting who's a good-boy. Pond: green bench and red goal removed, otherwise relentlessly frozen homeostasis.
Parliament assembles in the hardwoods—here, here, here—mitered titmice, regardless of the temperature, reaffirm the unstoppable tilting toward spring. I am not undone by the cold. Here, cloistered on the north end of a small valley, I rejoice in winter sunshine and the business of neighbors—ten jays, headdresses erect, perch high in the aspens, bathed by the sun, pale breasts and pale limbs aglow. I anticipate the imminent, inexorable swell and heave into spring. Of pussy willows and phoebes and militant frogs clacking in vernal pools.