6:56 a.m. 36 degrees, wind WSW 0 mph. Sky: misting beneath a cold, gray blanket; a vague sense that night has passed. Permanent streams: well-fed and convivial, visually and aurally beyond summer's drought. Wetlands: a color-crippled duotone. On the far shore, pine and hemlock an uninviting dark green wall, almost black; in the foreground, reeds tediously tan. A landscape in need of the sun. Pond: five hooded mergansers—two males in full breeding regalia, an arresting sight, two females, one juvenile male—circling and diving, a synchronized effort; a bubble patch in their wake. A male rises with a fish. Others not so fortunate (unless they ate underwater). Pop up like bathtub toys. Crests slicked back like pompadours . . . quintet of Little Richard ducks.
AOR: blue jay gathering grit for its gizzard. To make acorn flour?
A tuft of washed-out maidenhair fern, pale green fading to pale yellow; pale yellow blackening along the edges . . . an overcooking on the seasonal grill. Around the barn, shaggymane mushrooms melting, a black gooey, consequential drip of spores, autodigestion as procreation. The eloquence of evolution . . . the joy of self-absorption. The result: the perpetuation of the species. A Halloween fungus that's far more fascinating than Freddie Krugger.
Robins on the move, zipping through the pines and hardwoods. Another influx of red-breasted nuthatches; up and down maple trunks, flying across the road, tooting in the dim light. A chickadee on a wooden bridge flipping leaves. Looking for something. Thinks it's a thrush.
Yesterday afternoon, I watched a hawk above the upper pasture, his maple-colored tail an echo of the season. Rising up the vault of heaven like a column of smoke on a windless day. I thought of how my mother held a cigarette, of how my father drank Scotch, both firmly in control. Each a reflection of their own world. They ignored hawks, but they would have appreciated the redtail's ambition, precision, seemingly effortless flight. Hawk knows destiny. High into an October sky . . . and then gone, pulling the curtain down behind him.