6:33 a.m. 28 degrees, wind SSE 0 mph. Sky: fog in the east, cloudless in the west (for the moment) with a faint pink flush. Wetlands: hard frost whitens reeds and cattails, glosses islands of sweet gales. After the sun appears, warming the evergreens on the far shore, mist rises and softens the colors; one convoluted cloud builds in the west, blue and gray, and rimmed in white. View across the marsh, a postcard landscape that forecasts the future, cold but beautiful. A kingfisher on limb rattles; overhead, a southbound goose honks. Pond: manufactures fog, which hangs above the eastern hills. A raccoon tracked the soft mud last night, wandered the shoreline, and foraged in the shallows, preparing for winter . . . slowed by cold, frogs and tadpoles vulnerable. I startle a pair of froglets, which leap into the water, burrow under a blanket of drowned leaves. Stunned by the frost, milkweed leaves droop, a field of limp umbrellas.
Everywhere and slowly, white ash leaflets spin down. Scraps of fluttering yellow. The delicate sounds of ricocheting leaves, a counterpoint to the splash of squirrel-trimmed pinecones. If this keeps up, by noon, the ashes will be bald—an ash rain (as opposed to an ashram).
Pileated fractures the morning with sharp, strident laughs; a hysterical woodpecker, wildly calling. Drills a tree, an oblong excavation; then another. Flies into view—pointed head, red; crest swept back; wings, black and white. Rises and sinks. Passes a hairy woodpecker demurely working an oak limb under the radar, barely audible taps. Then, pileated flies in front of me. Looks like a pterodactyl straight out of the Age of Dinosaurs, wed to the valley for the prolonged darkness, rooted like ash.
Red-breasted nuthatches, blue jays, and chickadees chime in. Discussing options: do we stay, or do we go? I squeeze myself together against the cold, hands deep in feathered pockets. Warm dogs rub against my legs; the garden lays in ruin . . . am I ready?