Homeboy at Home During Coronavirus

November 17, 2020: Coyote Hollow, Thetford Center, VT

6:42 a.m. 30 degrees, wind SE 0 mph. Sky: the sun sneaks into position behind a thick bank of clouds, fissures and holes brushed by silver light, a faint, uncluttered blush in the east . . . more transitory than a mayfly. Permanent streams: water spilling over and around stones, miniature cascades, a rejoice of babble . . . a soothing banquet. Someone has to pay attention to flowing water. Home for the indefinite future, I might as well volunteer. Wetlands: color and sound muted, not a single flyover. Somewhere, in an unseen pine(s), a tweezer-billed chatter, red crossbills out for breakfast. Pond: a mishmash of ice, unconnected panes and shards, snow flurries bouncing on the ice, more ball than crystal, some stick, some melt, a seasonal seasoning.

A female hairy woodpecker works a dead pine, gentle taps as if loosening a jar's lid, chips of air-cured bark float down. Both red-breasted and white-breasted nuthatches call, nasal notes repeated, both monotonous, red's clearer, higher, and shorter than white's—a congested serenade. In the mid-nineties, when The Traveling Wilburys released their first album, I strived to recognize the voices of Tom Petty and George Harrison. (Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison were easy.) Nuthatches are like that, at first: short and nasal versus shorter and more nasal. I listen to the gravity-defying tedium, birds strolling down trunks. Canine confusion . . . the dogs have no clue.

Many years ago, when I studied wildlife biology as an undergraduate, our class subdivided Delaware County, Indiana, into a grid system. On designated mornings, I drove my grid and counted DORs—raccoon, red fox, long-tailed weasel, thirteen-lined ground squirrel, and so on. Back in class, we used a formula (long since forgotten) based on the number of roadkills to index each species' population. 

I don't think that formula applies to fallen pinecones. Since late August, a shower has littered my walking route, cut and left by red squirrels. Most of the cones are gone now, retrieved by squirrels, or pulverized into the dirt road, a sticky, white resinous stain—a reminder of cyclical overproduction in the natural world. If I need further proof that 2020 is the Autumn of the Pinecone, I listen to lingering crossbills and watch red squirrels attend cone caches or raid their neighbor's, lots of helter-skelter rushing, their whirring voices like tape decks run amok.