7:02 a.m. (regardless of the time change, sunrise two minutes earlier than yesterday). 23 degrees, wind W 4 mph. Sky: bright, light, and cloudless, a quarter-inch of fresh snow, perfect for tracking. Clouds coalesce like wisdom, slowly, methodically. Permanent streams: upper, unchanged, churning and ice-free; lower, still pinioned by winter, a shy, secretive flow, mink wanders downstream topside, perfectly paired tracks, five pointy toes, each ending in a claw mark; heel-pad, thin and asymmetrical, like a crooked "L," on a mission of hunger. Wetlands: a painterly landscape, a narrow band of fog, above the reeds and in front of snow-dusted evergreens. Clouds trimmed in the pink tones of sunrise hover above everything—aerial mountains in suspension.
Pileated drums, laughs, drums again . . . abandons communication. Raccoon tracks across the road and into the alders, a plodding gait. By comparison, mink a nimble, five-star ballerina. Pond: raccoon paid a visit here, too. And coyote, dreaming of spring, searches for company.
Before the walk, crows in the oaks, screaming, waiting for the break of day. Eyes on the compost pile. Brown creeper, song spilling from maples, high, thin, rich. A run of happy notes, almost inaudible. The bird needs subtitles . . . or I need a hearing aid. I listen but don't see the creeper, harder to find than it is to hear. And its volume is maddeningly turned down.
Fox walked up the driveway, a delicate, straight line of tracks. Maybe a gray fox? Across the front yard, under the pasture fence. A midnight loop. Tracks reappear in my neighbor's yard, camped under the bird feeder, waiting for mice, waiting for the world to defrost, again . . . and again, until spring overwhelms the senses.
One year ago today, I returned from Costa Rica: from tapirs and tayras; from five scarlet macaws drinking from a branch-cavity, one at a time, fifty feet above the ground; from a timberline wren, an elfin bird in the elfin forest, amid trees shaped by the will of the wind. Little did I know that I'd be home for a year, vacationing room to room and across my valley. For me, the challenges of the pandemic had a silver-lining, directly in my sightline. Daily, I re-engaged slow fun . . . the spin of the planet from one corner of a single valley. I reacquainted with The Hollow, my home for twenty-four years, with neighbors, transient, permanent, nomadic. What did I find: the sun rises in the east, sets in the west, thin ice breaks, chickadees don't care about pandemics. Observations and insights kneaded into a single gift of the here and now. Of being present, at home, alone for a moment . . . every day, like Isabelle with fresh eyes. Calling out to the seasons, discovering my world . . . anew.
Congratulations on the birth of your granddaughter, Ted. Isabell, is it? Wonderful!
I hope the one-year anniversary of your writing about The Hollow each morning doesn't mean that you're contemplating stopping your daily meditations altogether. We New York City readers count on your walks, your dogs, your chickadees, nuthatches, the pileated, the tracks of the mink . . .and your vivid descriptions of it all for our vicarious nature fix each day. Thank you!
~ Kate