6:31 a.m. (sunrise two minutes earlier than yesterday). 30 degrees, wind NW 15 mph, pines coaxed to squeak like ten thousand rusted gates. Sky: blue with a run of big, on-the-go clouds, white with pink highlights, mobile monuments to the Far North. Permanent streams: mink left the eastern rim of the valley, close to the ravaged goshawk nest, followed the lower stream to the marsh, returned along the upper. Paired prints lacing frozen slush. In and out of cold, dark water. Roamed the reeds swaddled in the pale-light of the moon—a dream-time hunter prowling the night like unconscious thought. Wetlands: hosted the mink last night, the wind this morning. Pileated flying south over the pines and spruce, sharpened at both ends—crest on fire. Wings semaphorically flash. Landing in secrecy, woodpecker laughs like a goblin, deep, wild, profound, out of sync with the stuttering trees. Warm light drenches the marsh and the sentineled forest—the vibrancy of sunshine. Pond: coyote ran up the bank and over the unplowed skating rink. Cleared ice bumpy from repetitive melting and freezing.
Raven, sailing northeast, flapping attuned to the wind. The calculus of flight. Red crossbills rain call-notes over the pines. Gusts of wind rain pine cones over the snow, all seedless. Some of the missing seeds were likely tweezed by irrupting crossbills. Red-breasted nuthatches on the loose in red pines, ringolevio around spindly trunks. Toot and chase. Make up for the near silence of titmice and chickadees. Doves in the driveway, grit collection. Jays in the treetops, screaming. One takes a white-footed mouse I left on the snow.
Early morning: feels like spring, looks like mud season, sounds like winter. Searching for love, fox marks the snow—the wizardry of pee. Used sparingly—a message composed of semiprecious fluids. The flowering of life, on the verge of cubs and kits and pups and chicks . . . and a grandchild.