6:05 a.m. 50 degrees, wind NNE 0 mph. Sky: the moon, a midline bulge more than half, and Venus draw closer; both slant west; a fluttering bat in the rose-pink of an otherwise empty sky. Permanent streams: more of the same but drier; upper, labored flow; lower, a memory. Wetlands: a bowl of mist; spills over the rim and crosses the road; funneled to the pond; a ground-fog highway. Pond: breeze-driven ripples, fog flows in; steam rises, and a turtle sculls the surface, a black chip in brown water.
Crows and jays, loud and repetitive, unlock the morning. Three crows in the crown of a maple, screaming. Hoping to find a crow-tormented owl, I wander over; find three crows airing out their lungs; no owl. A red-shouldered hawk, above the marsh, chucks its voice like a spear, cleaves mist, turns rose-pink dawn into a morning to savor. Hawk needs infrared goggles to see voles or rails in the reeds. I stop to listen . . . what else to I have to do? What else do I want to do?
Winter wren on fallen birch pecks at the trunk and thicker branches; brown bird on white bark. Secretive catbird in the alders, brooding. Six (maybe seven) red-breasted nuthatches high in white pine; a pair walk headfirst down the trunk; the others wander the upper limbs; everybody probing and calling. Sunlight strikes redbreasts, glows, a bold stroke of color on a dull-colored tree. Eventually, nuthatches drift away, one pine to the next, southward, trailing their voices behind them . . . tin horns fading into the infinite.
Red squirrels drift up the valley, itinerant harvesters following the pinecone crop north, one tree to the next, morning after morning . . . approaching driveway pines. Except for falling cones that bounce down resonant limbs, splash through layers of leaves, squirrel business very quiet. Keep to themselves. Crickets and grasshoppers, stiff with cold, squander away the last of summer, call feebly; feed meadow predators from turkey to coyotes to song sparrows; all grow fat on six-legged nutrient packages too numb to retreat . . . the conservation of protein. Like a warm thought or a good joke, protein converted and reclaimed down through the ages until the end of deep time.