Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow
A mid-morning downpour. I push my chair back from the sudden curtain of roof-runoff and continue writing to the thrum of it. After half an hour it subsides into drizzle and birdsong. A male towhee flits through the yard, pursued by a pair of begging fledglings.
A storm at dawn has left everything sodden. A small pale spider dangles half-way between the eaves and the banister, slowly turning, occasionally waving her legs.
Crystal-clear and unseasonably cool, with dew dripping from the roof. Downy woodpeckers rattle back and forth. Tree trunks glow and fade as the sun climbs through the forest.
Partly cloudy an hour after sunrise, and too cool for most flying insects. A pair of gnatcatchers at the woods’ edge comb the undersides of leaves for their breakfast.
Around mid-morning, one of the groundhogs living under the house emerges from a hole beside the porch and goes off to forage. The sun appears through a hole in the clouds and lights up the elderberry blossoming beside the creek.
Cool and crystal-clear. I watch a small insect zigzag back and forth in a shaft of sunlight. Waxwings whistle in the treetops. Valley sounds are nearly inaudible; the buzzing of a hornet is enough to drown out a distant motor.
Breezy and warm. A chipmunk races down the driveway, trailed by a great-spangled fritillary. A few small scraps of cloud pass overhead.
Breezy, cool and humid. Two amorous gray squirrels at the edge of the woods make one branch dance. One of the hundreds of native species of little brown moths flutters in to shelter under the eaves.
Having slept through a dawn storm, I wake to find the power out. A towhee yells at me from a branch of the closest walnut—one song I can hear above the dull roar of the generator up at my mother’s house.
Humid, cool and overcast at sunrise — an orange glow. Two thin deer wander through the meadow at the edge of the woods, lowering their heads for a mouthful of bracken, some grass, a goldenrod tip …
Clear and cool. The wheezing of a gnatcatcher from the tallest walnut tree. A gangly hangingfly comes fluttering under the eaves.
Cool and still damp from yesterday afternoon’s downpour. Goldfinches go chittering through the treetops. Drinking the last of my tea in silence, I feel the absense of a resident Carolina wren pair—those endlessly enthusiastic assertions, and the female’s succinct replies.
Faint rumors of a storm at midmorning; the sun briefly goes in. The big tulip tree at the woods’ edge raises a thousand yellow cups of nectar to the white sky and its winged legions of beetles.
Sun and thin clouds—and almost autumnal feeling to the air. But a hooded warbler’s insistent call quickly dispells that impression. A groundhog pops up beside the porch, sees me and disappears again.