6:37 a.m. 46 degrees, wind ENE 0 mph. Sky: half moon long gone; a beacon last night, absent this morning; ground fog hovering above marsh and distant river, ribbons on the hillside above empty streams that bear the blessed memory of water.
Wetlands: chowder fog, thick enough to spoon; thick enough to hide brontosaurs, knee-deep in muck, grazing western shore. Red-shouldered hawk, perched somewhere in the rolling white, screams, long, loud fog-piercing screams that revamp the morning. Who needs colossal dinosaurs when you have a hawk? Pond: brown, unmarred surface releases mist so thin I'm not sure I'm looking through mist at all. Little kingdoms of sarsaparilla: puddles of butter-yellow in dark woods.
DOR: short-tailed shrew, a hummingbird among mammals, a genetically caffeinated and perpetually jazzed; Life ends on the road; from twelve hundred heartbeats per minute to zero . . . and no car involved. A fatal burnout.
AOR: turkeys, tracks everywhere in the road dust.
Very quiet and still; a morning in suspension. A few red-breasted nuthatches, tin horns tooting in the fog, remind me that not every last one has left. Chickadees subdued; jays on strike. Everybody waits for sunlight.
Yesterday, late afternoon, above the East Branch of the Ompompanoosuc River, close to the Tucker Hill covered bridge, a hatchling milk snake moves across a trail: a spinning barber pole of brick red and cream white bands, nine-inches of sensuous curves. A waterless flow; loose-spined; its shingled belly hugs the ground, swimming. Tiny tongue flicking; fits in my hand, a rubbery toy of a snake; never stops moving or biting; invisibly small teeth catch a knuckle, dig in—a painless bite, mouth wide like an open book, breathing and biting. A newborn off to see the world, unexpectedly and momentarily interrupted. I set snakelet down; it swims away through gravel and sand, around a fortress of goldenrod stems that rise into withered bouquets.
Knee-deep in the huddled wreckage of summer, I watch the milk snake unspool into the weeds. It is autumn, now, the gathering of darkness. I want to take the snake home, make a life for it in a glass bowl with sand and leaves and bark and plate of water. Belly scales scratch sand, a faint ambivalent sound, the sound of unparalleled risk . . . and unmitigated freedom.