7:04 a.m. 39 degrees, wind E 0 mph. Sky: an embodiment of blue-gray, grayish-pink highlights in the east. Bands of ground fog, mobility of mist convert hills to islands. Permanent streams: fuller and louder in the narrows, then, en route to the marsh, spreading into shallow, spongy floodplains, an unfrozen saturation. Wetlands: textures softened by mist, color darkened by cloud cover, one F-stop underexposed. The ringing tumult of jays, high overhead and in the pines. I saw an owl last week, across the marsh, mid-way up shoreline hemlock. After nearly two hundred days of looking, one owl. Once. I still look, still hope to see the big bird perched in the raw, stoic as a monk: snow biting and swirling. Nada. But I look in earnest, anyway. Wishful, a boy at a ballpark . . . begging for a homerun whenever Mickey Mantle stepped to the plate. Pond: rain puddles wait to consolidate. Jigsaw pieces of smooth ice. Granular ice off the shoreline, slight relief like a miniature topo map. A globe of open water where the hillside drains into the pond.
Chatty red squirrel ignores the dogs and me. Carries on. Racing up and down a leaning pine, tail like a parasol, folded back over its body. Dogs, helplessly attentive, sit, fixed on the squirrel—leashes strain.
Two ravens flying together, separate. One heads northwest over the marsh, the other, like a compass needle, due north. They have little to say . . . but wings speak, like a newspaper stoking the air. Mixed flock of chickadees and red-breasted nuthatches. Chickadees, high in the crown, consider the end of ash twigs. Gravity-defying, nuthatches scrutinize the secrets of confetti lichen, prospecting for life in the pale green tufts.
The first sunrise after Thanksgiving, and I am still grateful. Although sequestered by a pandemic, hostage to political backwash and the nonsense of polls, the injustice of racism, a troubled climate, the sadness of environmental tragedy, the black hole of extinction . . . I still have family and friends. And everpresent chickadees, the joy-spreading burst of feathers, gray as the morning, frolicking at sunrise.
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
These words by Mary Oliver in her poem "Sometimes" reflect your writing, as they do the photography of John Snell, who introduced me to your newsletter. Both of you understand that the joy of a chickadee deserves attention in spite of (or perhaps because of) the weight of the world. Thanks for paying attention and telling us about it!