6:08 a.m. 61 degrees, wind SW 1 mph. Sky: withheld by ground fog; up there somewhere; last night's thunderstorm, which lit up a dark bedroom, left the woods soaked and dripping. Permanent streams: inspired and flowing; upper, current recalibrated, reinvigorated, and sounding off, an audible and variable murmur—sharper through the steeper, narrower banks, softer through the shallow plains; lower, feeds the marsh, again. Wetlands: closed off by ground fog; hints of shapes and colors. Pond: calm; indistinct visibility, a mist-making machine; surface skin tightness interrupted by errant bubbles of methane. No otter. No merganser. No bittern. Turtles below. Mosquitos above. Frogs at peace pressed to the shoreline like postage stamps.
Two little brown bats, socially-distant, fly constricted figure eights above the front yard, trolling for winged ants and mosquitoes, survivors of their own epidemic. A white tail flashing in dim woods; soundlessly rises and sinks like the erratic flight of an owl; rest of deer obscure by fog and tree trunks. Red squirrels continue to harvest green pine cones, which splash and knock to the forest floor . . . the sound of an industrious mammal, the sound of time passing.
Two pewees whistle in the mist: Loquacious jays and crows, bursts of vocal energy on a rather quiet walk. Chickadee's two-note song harks back to mid-winter when spring was a dream. Why sing now, when the rest of the landscape braces for the future? Ovenbird, first I've heard in a month, sings a clipped version of teacher, teacher, teacher . . . more like teach, teach, teach, encouraging note on the threshold of the weirdest school year I remember.