Moon over Beech Hill.
A brilliant, cold morning. I heard—but never saw, for all my looking—a white-breasted nuthatch in the bare oaks up the hill out back. A pair of crows flew into the yard next door to poke around.
The open trail.
Another hectic morning at the desk, so by mid-afternoon a break was in order. Jack and I pulled up into the parking lot beneath a brilliant, cold hill. One vehicle in the parking lot. Ice on the trail. No sign of any birds—no bird voices in the light breeze. I did hear the distant rush of car tires on neaby roads. The faint rustling of clingy old oak and maple leaves.
Ascending, I looked up at the waxing moon, just then rising high above the hill. A few clouds here and there—mostly out over the bay—and curls of smoke rising from the chimneys of a couple houses down in the wooded valley to the south. A blue-blue sky above.
Despite the cold, my fingers didn’t go numb today. Warmer than yesterday? Better gloves? (I wore different, newer ones.) Icicles still hung from the roof of Beech Nut.
The bay.
We didn’t dilly-dally. Turned and started back down. About half-way, we stopped so Jack could mark a bush. I stood and listened: somewhere in the sky, the distant roar of a jet; somewhere on a road—South Street?—the rush of tires; nearby, the whisper of dead leaves in the hardwood trees. Gentle, quiet sounds, perfectly descriptive of the natural ambience of a mostly bare hillside in the afternoon of a brilliant cold day on the 44th parallel.
I loved the quiet hillside ambience—love it. I didn’t even miss the birds.
After midnight: light snow, fog horns, stars and setting moon, raccoons somewhere up the hill.
Beech Hill List
Beginning at 2:45 p.m., I hiked the open trail
No birds seen or heard on the hill today.
Elsewhere
1. American crow
2. Herring gull
3. White-breasted nuthatch
4. Black-capped chickadee
Tags: American crow, black-capped chickadee, herring gull, white-breasted nuthatch
