6:58 a.m. 30 degrees, wind N 1 mph. Sky: flat, dull gray, no texture, no luster. Looks like snow or cold rain shortly. Micro patches of snow on the north side of trees, in the shade of fallen leaves, in gullies, footprints, and depressions. Permanent streams: an eyeball measurement, in the absence of rain, day by day, a peninsula of sand and silt in the lower stream slowly emerges, my yardstick for the evaporative atrophy of late autumn. Wetlands: lightly whitened, cold air flowed downhill and made itself at home . . . an Arctic outpost, a frost-prone settlement. Pond: unbroken jigsaw pieces, feathers and panes. Otter patrols elsewhere. The tongue of black water draining the eastern flank of the valley, shorter and narrower than yesterday, slowly closing. Clear, thin ice windows into the pond, a motionless bottom. Tadpoles and turtles sleep in a frigid bath, tucked under a blanket of maple leaves.
Once, many years ago, while looking for winter owls in a swale between parallel sand dunes, I found a large, deep, frozen-over puddle, and watched a muskrat swim beneath me, trailed by a profusion of bright, round air bubbles that rose out of its fur, expansive lines of silver fireworks. I lay on the ice. Slid after the muskrat, back and forth and back again, mesmerized by the pearly discharge, which gathered on the undersurface of the ice like packs of rowdy boys, pushing and shoving, popping and melding.
Dogs walk erect. Heads up and slightly back, turn side to side. Noses in the air. Devotion to odor. Must be a deer or a restless bear. It can't possibly be the two flocks of chattering crossbills that just passed over.
A mixed flock of nuthatches (red- and white-breasted) and chickadees on pole-sized maples and ashes, the ends of pine branches. Investigate everything. One chickadee has something big enough to pin-down with a foot and hammer. Others eat as they move, tiny food. Insect eggs? Dwarf cocoons? Seeds?
The joy of communion. An unbridled, unburdened relaxation with kindred spirits. Dining out. Chickadees and nuthatches remind me of what my life was like.
What an image--of you sliding back and forth on the ice, transfixed by the air bubble pearls from the fur of a muskrat! You must have so many of those memories--what an amazing life you have woven!