7:04 a.m. (sunrise one minute earlier than yesterday). 28 degrees, wind NW 7 mph. Sky: shallow and teeming with small flakes, a white dreamland. Eight inches on the ground. Cream-colored visibility, now less than a mile. Hemlock branches sag like collapsed umbrellas. Stunningly quiet (like the early days of the pandemic). Even the chickadees and jays have nothing to report. Intermittent streams: snow-filled clefts on the hillside. Permanent streams: visually and audibly insulated, not a gurgle or a purl. Wetlands: marsh more white than beige, evergreens more white than green. The first sign of a bird, a hairy woodpecker, tentatively works a pine limb, soft, well-spaced taps, demurely feeding, slow-motion breakfast as though on quaaludes. Pond: above the east bank, in the path of the wind, red pines snowless. Above the west bank, hemlocks and fir laden.
No tracks . . . anywhere but my own. Raven and pileated hushed and hidden. Where are the crows?
The Hollow, a lonely panorama, beautifully embellished in white. By 8:30 a.m., birds finally arrive, rotate from yard trees to feeders. Jays, chickadees, titmice, nuthatches. Feed in silence, disciplined by the weather. Jay lands in cherry, dents limb. Careless, unconsolidated rain of snow. By 9:45 a.m., birds elsewhere, a fleeting jubilee. Leaving me to shovel.