Homeboy at Home During Coronavirus

November 29, 2020: Coyote Hollow, thetford Center, VT

7:01 a.m. 27 degrees, wind E 1 mph. Sky: pale blue and empty, a faint rose infusion. Last night dense fog, this morning frost, frozen raindrops fixed to twigs like confection. A bleached, crystalline world. Permanent streams: although the lower stream carries more water, it's quicker to shrink and dry than the upper, which has a deeper, more dependable source. Of course, you wouldn't know that today; bold babble on a cold morning carries far up the road. Wetlands: a catch-basin for dense air, which drains downhill like water and settles with iron confidence. Glazed marsh, glazed alders, glazed islands of sweet gale. Red squirrels, more shiver than chatter, a rustling of the teeth. Pond: frozen over, slush to ice. Some portions polished smooth; others, jigsaw pieces with raised edges, aqueous sutures stitching the lid together. Nine circles of varying diameters, thinner, clearer ice. A moment of mystery, a question imposed . . . 

An otter paid a call last night. Likely, arrived from the marsh, via the culvert under the road. Up the rock retaining wall, fur dripping. Through the black-plastic overflow culvert and into a dark pond, sealed shut. Surfaced nine times, each hole bludgeoned open from below. Skull thick as a brick. Ice shards fixed to the surface like broken panes of glass, fragments of an abstract tangram. Swimming in circles, the otter authored the newest ice, now glass clear. One hole, mid pond: two crayfish claws, frozen in and frosted, the residue of a midnight snack.

Gray squirrel at the feeder before sunrise, before jays, before chickadees. A hidden hairy woodpecker tapping a pole-sized pine snag . . . woodland Western Union. Fourteen crows commute north; caws rain down on a frozen valley. A cheerful flock of red-breasted nuthatches. One walks down pine and forages through a mat of frozen leaves, every step the faint tinkle and crackle of tiny feet. Somewhere, the delicate whisper of a brown creeper. A raven, loud and loquacious, passes high overhead, well behind the northbound crows.

As the Sunday Times crossword puzzle, my valley is an assortment of questions, a few answers ironclad, most inaccessible. Several involve educated guesses . . . like the otter's nighttime visit. I am the witness. I note questions posed, and answers suggested. Landscape rife with mystery and rapture. At least for a few moments, I can forget my own predicament and revel in the notion of a dark otter, dripping wet, eating crayfish under the gibbous moon.