6:48 a.m. (sunrise five minutes earlier than last Friday). 23 degrees, wind N 0 mph (day-three into a seven-day warm stretch, 60 degrees plus, snow and ice in full retreat). Sky: on auto-pilot, clear with a trace of lavender and peach. Crows call at daybreak, sound agitated as though they woke up on the wrong side of the branch. Permanent streams: impacted by warm weather. Upper, flush with snowmelt, a few glimmering specks of ice stuck to a rock and a broken limb, destined to vanish by mid-morning; lower, a tunneled flow, revealing more of itself, in and out, and loud. The shape of open water, long, wavy ovals and distorted circles. Wetlands: at least half the snow cover is gone, reeds revealed, bent and broken by winter, hung with frost. Across the marsh, pileated relentlessly drums in the hemlocks, lots of pauses, lots of repetition. Pond: rotting ice, visible soft spots above discharging groundwater. Robins call and sing in the pines.
Dog tangled in the leash jumps and shakes to free himself. The canine version of Saturday Night Fever or Dirty Dancing. Other dog watches, incredulous. (I'm stunned myself.)
Pair of creepers, song thin and sweet, courting. Two specks of airborne bark, tree to tree, tail pressed to the trunk, a barber-pole journey up cherry and then ash. One creeper after the other, trailing bird sings . . . the seduction of species-specific music. I wish snakes sang, long lungs bearing notes of interest, resonating off the hall of a thousand ribs. This weather makes me think garter snake. (Or, rattlesnake at the mouth of a Lake Champlain den.) Over the weekend, I faced the sun in a T-shirt from an Adirondack chair. How far off could snakes be, their rocks divinely warm?
Yesterday: red-winged blackbird joined three grackles and a junco under the feeder—all seasonal firsts.
A robin sings an abridged song in the front yard, calls incessantly, commandeers an already blissful morning. Flies into aspen. Joined by four jays. All birds face the sun, breasts incandescent.
The Hollow unlocking, opening up, winter temporarily undone. For a magical day (for six or seven), spring erupts with a vengeance. But I've lived in Vermont long enough to know . . . winter will rise again, maybe next week. And, perhaps, also after that. I'll go outside, stay out, celebrate my version of Passover . . . the release from the tyranny of the Coronavirus virus. Not four hundred years of enslavement in Egypt, but . . . freedom of the present moment.