5:32 a.m. (sunrise one minute earlier than yesterday). 30 (bleak) degrees (unfortunately, mittens already packed), wind S 1 mph. Sky: nearly flawless, several suggestions of clouds along the southern rim, tender twists of mauve, all that remains of daybreak; a far cry from yesterday's rainbow and the pair of geese that crossed in front, flushed with lemon light. Permanent streams: calming down; lower, a couple of phoebes perching over the water, tails flicking, nest either on the underside of the wooden snowmobile bridge or in the opening of the cement culvert under the road, the mouth of a twenty-first-century cave. Wetlands: frost glazed and green along the main channel; pools refect hemlocks and pine, a Saint Patrick's Day green. Peepers broadcast from unseen pools. Hidden behind far-shore evergreens, owls caterwaul. Pond: rolling mist, a loss of heat.
Moldering flowers of red maples, red-brown scabs on the road, floral measles. Infant leaves: aspen sage-green; red maple rust-green; sugar maple lime-green; black cherry kelly-green; all the rest of the woods a run of olive and mint and jade . . . the birth of another year. Hints of color, an inversion of autumn. Beech leaves unwind, long and soft. Ebony buds of white ash linger, dark as ravens, round as marbles; leaves open late, drop early.
Every American boy knows a great deal about White Ash wood, wrote Donald Culross Peattie in 1948. He knows the color of its yellowish sapwood and the pale brown grain of the annual growth layers in it. He knows the weight of White Ash not in terms of pounds per cubic foot but in the more immediate and unforgettable sensation of having lifted and swung a piece of it, of standard size. He even knows the precise resonance and pitch, the ringing tock of it when struck. For it is of White Ash, and of White Ash only, that good baseball bats are made.
The other night, as I watched the Yankee-Astro's game, I lost count of the number of maple and hickory bats that shattered, barrels flying across the infield. Ash is not too brittle, the wood flexible and pliable but not too soft. Ideal for baseball bats. Grosbeaks love the seeds. Unfortunately, emerald ash borers love the heartwood. And, increasingly and sadly, airborne kindling becomes synonymous with the National Pasttime.
Red-eyed vireos are either not yet in the Hollow or have taken a vow of silence. Ovenbirds, which arrived overnight, pick up the slack. Apparently, well ahead of the other Neotropical masses. Did these ovenbirds avoid an over-Gulf flight and spend the winter in Florida, foraging among coral snakes and ground skinks?
Parula whispers in the pines. House wren cuts loose in the tickets. Flickers laughing in the aspens, not the derisive laugh of pileateds, much higher-pitched and faster. As red as a poinsettia, neighborhood cardinal is ostensibly here to stay, perched on young ash, leans back, whistles—long, downward slurs—one of the few birds I converse with (I think we dialogue; I'm not sure what the cardinal thinks). My dogs, masquerading bewilderment, sit on the driveway, tongues lolling between sets of blunted teeth, patiently wait for a helpful signal from me as they watch the day open up.
❤️baseball