6:49 a.m. 25 degrees, wind SE 4 mph. Sky: a taut uniform gray, featureless as an unrumpled sheet. Snow . . . micro flakes that whiten the forest floor and mark the open air, stinging my eyes, chilling my cheeks, gathering on the coats of dogs, a light, stable dusting, absent since the first week of May. An untainted white. Permanent streams: water rushes around snow-capped rocks. Wetlands: white on beige, reduced visibility. Pond: snow-surfaced ice, trackless. A half-moon of open water against the eastern shore, gift of a leaky hillside.
Three ravens, ambassadors from another valley, preceded by their voices. Growls. Croaks. And a percussive knocking. Corvid dialogues, complicated discussions. Doppler into the morning from beyond Robinson Hill. Louder and louder and louder. Then the birds, coal-black and inquisitive. Miss nothing. Read the world from aloft. Know where they're going . . . above the marsh, the pond, the eastern flank, toward the big river, whitened by snow. And, gone, voices trailing off like old news.
A fourth raven appears, plays catchup. Follows the narrative thread great black wings like awnings, stretched and barely flapping. Big-brained bird, an avian Mensa. Although buoyant chickadees and nuthatches filled the nearby pines and maples, I can't stop watching the raven, alone in a sky brushed with snow. Calling. Wanting. Seeking companionship, three minutes behind his friends, having dawdled at the evergreen roost. Late on the hemlock branch reading Mary Oliver?
Does he see the trio far ahead, black dots in the gray? Raven, a triumph of vision and will flaps over the hill and out of sight, a kitchen-sink of a bird. Black as the Queen of Spades, voice receding like static. Yesterday, I got the news that a college friend died of COVID-19, alone, serving a life sentence in a Texas prison. An unhinged year grew unimaginably darker.
Now, on the eve of Thanksgiving, I'll take whatever gifts the valley offers. Life in the open air, on a bleak Wednesday morning, an unconquerable joy. To be unmoored from the pandemic, if only momentarily, something I am eternally thankful for.