5:13 a.m. 49 degrees, wind E 0 mph, not a ripple across the pond, not a rustle of a leaf. Slightly foggy, mostly over the wetland and pond, and along the Ompompanoosuc River, softening and smoothing contours, muting color; for a golden moment Coyote Hollow shape-shifts into an even wilder, more remote valley, a resplendent illusion of isolation, primordial North America, revisited . . . four miles from the elementary school, five from the interstate. Beguiled by beauty, I stand still, something vital welling up inside me.
As if to echo the sense of time-travel, hooded merganser and seven chicks cruise the rim of the pond, in and out of a mesh of fog. Sees me. Retreats to the far end, flanked by emerging cattails. Huddled and alert, chicks dark with white slashes, like sunlight on water. Hen, frozen in place, her expressive crest either slicked back or pompadoured; in-between, she's a composite of Little Richard and a Spartan helmet. To reach the pond, the ducks crossed the wetland, into and out of a phalanx of brittle cattails and congestion of stout alders, up a road bank, crossed the road, and then up another bank. The pond offers them a buffet of aquatic insects and big tadpoles, some gulping air, halfway to frogs . . . bon appetit.
A hermit thrush broadcasting from the eastern shoulder of the Coyote Hollow; an ethereal song pierces fog, rendering everything else pedestrian. Pileated wallops a trunk, sending a message of intent, which reverberates throughout the valley. Pack-a-day tanager in oaks, harsh notes, gorgeous color; Tom Waits of songbirds; screened by green.
Sunlight dissipates fog, turns leaves into factories, turns morning, another morning, into another gift . . . a morning rich with possibility that sticks to me like sand, just beyond my doorstep.