Homeboy at Home During Coronavirus

March 4, 2021: Coyote Hollow, Thetford Center, VT

6:20 a.m. (sunrise one minute earlier than yesterday). 24 degrees, wind NW 6 mph. Sky: unlidded half-moon, bright as polished silver, slightly west of center, alone in blue simplicity. A short wall of lavender-gray clouds, east to west, hugs the horizon, on the move, disassociating and enlivening. An atmospheric chameleon, lavender becomes pink, gray becomes white. Permanent streams: otter did not return. Wetlands: broken clouds sail east, still suggest pink. Full of surprise, a bleak marsh comes to life, suddenly. While dogs sit on the edge of the road, preoccupied eating biscuits, bobcat walks through alders, thirty feet away: silent feet, coat of twilight, face like a soiled softball. Sideburns flare, ears straight up, Search-light eyes, mustard-colored and slashed by vertical pupils—the original marbles. A solitary wildcat keeps his own company. Never looks up. Unintentionally, turns a decent day joyous. I whisper bobcat, bobcat. Busy licking biscuits and reeling in drool, dogs oblivious. Not wanting to disturb the bobcat, I never lift my binoculars. I just watch and breathe. Bobcat walks through the austerity of alders into the cattails. Vanishes in plain sight like a forgotten metaphor. I'm ghosted. Pileated drums . . . jars me out of feline delirium. Pond: coyote and fox tracks, pales by comparison to bobcat, a Vermont first.

Crows converse. Jays gossip. Titmice and chickadees singing. Hairy woodpeckers drumming. And me . . . still lost in a bobcat moment, the morning’s gift. 

Yesterday: I backtracked the otter down the lower stream into the marsh. Otter bounded, slid on toboggan belly, went for a swim, mud on the rims of holes. Into snow tunnels. Out of snow tunnels. A toilet filled with scraps of crayfish, claws and carapace. 

Twelve months at home, in the company of goshawks, otters, mink, bobcat, solitary sandpipers, crossbills, Connecticut warbler, great horned owl, infant milk snake, a snapping turtle a big as a washtub, courting eagles, mating crows. And all day, every day, the delicate companionship and exuberance of chickadees. A fortunate upside during an unfortunate downturn.