6:43 a.m. (sunrise one minute earlier than yesterday). 10 degrees, wind NNW 1 mph. Sky: a featureless winter gray, edge to edge, the word blah fits. Permanent streams: synchronously slick and brittle like walking on rigid plastic, an inaudible flow. Wetlands: deer tracks across the marsh, puncture wounds in crisp, glossy snow. Bobcat and coyotes, weight spread out, walked on top, footpad surfers. Hopeless and helpless, dogs and I slip, slide, flounder, rupture, a series of plunge holes in our wake. Pond: a very gingerly stroll on slick ice, like between the periods of a hockey game, when I moved the nets to the boards ahead of the Zamboni.
Above the Hollow: one crow, two hot-air balloons, droves of garrulous jays, all feeder bound. Tuning forks at sunrise, passing through a stereophonic tunnel of hairy woodpeckers, drumbeats in the tangled woodland. All calibrated to the lengthening day. The sound of a resonating limb, the heartbeat of the morning, follows me uphill. Several woodpeckers feeding, an arrhythmic tapping sounds like the pace of my high school typing class. Hunting and pecking. Tap, tap, tap.
From the far side of the barn, titmouse whistles, a truncated version of spring song. Two pe-ters and done. Chickadee softly whistles in the maples, almost a whisper. No oomph. No urgency. I pause, listening and watching the morning blossom, a curator who marks seasonal transitions, like the spark of autumn on August's first red leaf. Of course, being human, I'm hobbled by limited awareness. I can't see ultra-violet or infra-red (or any color other than visible spectrum). I can't hear the ultrasonic conversations of bats and moths. Nor the infrasonic mumbles of Earth itself. I miss the depth and nuance of what every bird and insect actually has to say. But my imagination has slipped its berth, and I can visualize the invisible. And sense just enough to carry on amid the big mystery, one marvel after another.
"But my imagination has slipped its berth, and I can visualize the invisible. And sense just enough to carry on amid the big mystery, one marvel after another." What a wonderful combination, to picture you and the dogs slipping and sliding and plunging, while your imagination soars. Robert Macfarlane's UNDERLAND explores the mysteries beneath our feet:
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/03/729156788/underland-connects-us-to-dazzling-worlds-beneath-our-feet