Snowy trail.
This day dawned gray and mild. Mild in a wintry way—that is, not warm, but soft and gentle. We’d been hearing rumblings of a major snowstorm headed this way, but now everyone is second-guessing that forecast, and it looks like we won’t get very much snow. (Points south aren’t so lucky.) Crows frolicking in the oaks, as usual, and the voices of house sparrows across the road. I saw a few tiny birds flitting through the bare crowns of some hardwood away out back of the neighbor’s place; they looked to be a little pod of chickadees.
Beech Nut.
Busy at my desk all day. Lots of phone calls (odd). Finally, after he’d napped for hours, I got Jack up with the suggestion, “Beech Hill?”
And so we went. And got there somewhat after 4 p.m. No sign of other hikers. In fact, on snowshoeing up the trail, I couldn’t be sure that our tracks from yesterday weren’t the last anyone had made. About half-way up, I felt sure of it: we were the last to walked there twenty-four hours ago. The clouded sky hung blue and sullen. A little ruffle of wind made a rush past my ears.
Somewhere beyond the rush I heard a percussive bird call. And again. Although it was windswept, I’m gonna say it came from the throat of a flicker.
But no other birds did I hear or see up there. Saw only a patch of clearing to the northeast, beyond Beech Nut. And ranks of lowering clouds off to the southeast, beyond the islands. And a slight strip of blue above the inland hills. We reached the hut, paused to listen, heard only the wind and the distant bark of a dog.
Birch.
Only as we’d neared the bottom of the hill again did the dog bark manifest itself: a loud, leashed dog pulling a young woman up the trail on cross-country skis. But she also had a hiking partner, another woman, whose big dog was unleashed and overly antic. I warned of the leash rule up there. I worry, for all the dog-owners I have to warn of this rule, that at some point I won’t be able to take Jack up there at all, leash or no leash. To say nothing of the rule against hiking beyond sunset.
We reached the truck right about sundown. I stopped to listen—and heard only the faint rush of wind in the spruce boughs.
Tonight, I see faint stars. I see low clouds also, but the stars are peeping through. I don’t expect we’ll get much of a storm. Tonight, anyway, or for the next few days.
Beech Hill List
Beginning at 4:15 p.m., I hiked the open trail.
1. Northern flicker (voice)
Elsewhere
2. American crow
3. House sparrow
4. Black-capped chickadee
Tags: American crow, black-capped chickadee, house sparrow, northern flicker
