6:55 a.m. (sunrise two minutes earlier than yesterday). 9 degrees, wind WNW 0 mph. Sky: overcast and flurries, straight down, minimal drift. Flurries evolve into a full-blown snowstorm. Permanent streams: upper, yesterday's sunshine remodeled holes into a necklace of oblong openings, dark and churning; lower, still pampered under snow and ice, a trackless white ribbon . . . heard but not seen. Wetlands: a hushed bowl of falling snow. Drained of thought (for the moment), I stand open-mouthed and catch flakes on my tongue. Having no idea what's happening, dogs sit down and watch. For the moment, birds silent as stone, not peep nor a whistle nor a drum-beat. Pond: looping the perimeter, new boots squeak on ice.
On the southeast side of the marsh, beneath two balsam firs, twigs pepper the snow, each about an inch or two long. Product of a red squirrel, cleanly cut by four, self-sharpening incisors. Squirrel eats terminal buds, discards twigs. Must have grown tired of a steady diet of pine nuts, stored by the gallon in caches under the snow. Yesterday must have been heavenly for a squirrel to dine alfresco on a fir limb, warm by unblemished sunshine, on a still afternoon—a welcomed break from subterranean lunches in dead-end tunnels in frozen ground. This morning, the squirrel sleeps in.
A quiet morning. Prospecting for birds. Back in the front yard, just a few jays and white-breasted nuthatches call. Chickadees on standby remain inconspicuous. Two doves perch in ash, hunched over like old men. A pair of affable ravens, dwarfed by the sky, wing tip to wing tip, row through the snowstorm, the tandem flight of commitment . . . five days before Valentine's Day.
Then there are two of us! Maybe more...
I love that I am not the only one over a certain age who still catches snowflakes on my tongue.