7:24 a.m. 23 degrees, wind NNW 9 mph, raw and oceanic, shrieks through pines. Sky: overcast, a half-light somewhere between nautical and civil twilight. Permanent streams: harmonizing with the weather, no change from yesterday or the day before. If I rearrange rocks, they will carry a different tune. Wetlands: colors dull, cold wind sharply out of the north bends reeds, stirs pines, spindly and agitated. I know what to expect and face the wind like a chickadee. Pond: feeder stream is frozen shut, black tail docked by ice. Deer, like a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, exhibits exceptional artwork. Shapes like half-filled balloons unspooled across the surface. New tracks loop through old, sensuous and appealing. Why would a deer wander on the pond at night, supervised by a waning moon and peek-a-boo stars?
Lone red-breasted nuthatch chronically tooting in the pines. No crows or ravens. Eleven jays at the feeder. No sign of the great horned owl last night or this morning.
Chickadees, however, everywhere busy, diligently and merrily picking through pine bark. Chatting up a storm. For me, a palpable sigh of relief. Chickadees, anchored in the here and now like Old Testament prophets, their world unconstricted, unrestricted, unmoored from our chaos and rubble . . . flowers with thousands of hopeful petals.