5:22 a.m. 40 degrees, wind NNE 0 mph, the valley as still as stone. Blue sky stained by a pair of sunlit contrails, conspicuous by their absence these past two months. So novel the appearance of jets, I follow one with binoculars as it spews shiny carbon emissions across the sky vault. NNE heading SSW. Flights from Europe to JFK or Dulles, maybe. When will I board a commercial plane again?
Ribbons of water run quietly; some barely so. Gullies dry along the road. Depressions in the woods drain to bowls of mud, which gather curious robins. Mist from the pond, which is scarcely noticeable in the wetland, rises straight up. Two male mallards, one decidedly lighter than the other, graze the shoulder of the main channel. A hen wood duck flies out of the reeds, circles, and then disappears over the trees.
Warblers songs by descending volume: ovenbird (screams); redstart; yellowthroat; chestnut-sided; black-throated green; parula; Nashville; black and white (murmurs), sings high, both its voice and its perch, nests low, often at the base of a tree. A fussy junco picks grit on the side of the road, inspecting pebbles as though panning for gold. I stop to watch. Above me, a chickadee forages in needle clusters of red pine, just as fussy as junco. Neither birds nor I am in a big hurry.
Have the solitary sandpipers left the wetland to the snapping turtle, whose investment here is for life? Are the sandpipers headed to muskeg, having crossed the Gulf of Mexico and traced the rim of the continent, having followed the Connecticut River lonely from the sea . . . having paused for a beguiling moment for my consideration?