Hillside.

Here it’s not even 10 a.m. yet, and already today has left yesterday in the dust, bird-wise. In fact, I awaked to the sound of crows yelling at something and jumped out of bed and threw on my robe and grabbed my camera and dashed barefoot out onto the deck, in hopes of hawk or eagle. Or fox. But all I got was cold feet and a good look at the undersides of a couple crows.

Then an hour or so later, while out shoveling the collective mass of these sweet, interminable flakes of snow, I heard birds everywhere. A titmouse up the hill. Three crows across the road. A blue jay over there, too.

Sun and snow.

Then came the faint, high-pitched squeals of robins, and I looked up to see at least forty of them fluttering over in a loose cloud against the snowy gray sky. Just at that moment a big truck went by, and a couple stragglers headed off in other directions, no matter that they flew a good hundred feet above the semi. And as tiny snowflakes melted in my eyes, a mourning dove appeared, seemingly at random, zipping in a straight line toward the south.

Then just as I was finishing up, I heard a chickadee.

I also heard the wails of ambulances—one from St. George, one from Rockland—and as I tossed another shovelful of heavy, wet snow over the rail of the walkway, I couldn’t help wondering if morning the snow had claimed more victims. It’s an old story: some burly middle-aged guy who hardly works up a sweat the rest of the year declares war on the snow in his driveway and soon ends up lying on his back in it, clutching his chest, and making a one-winged snow angel. I can’t pretend the prospect doesn’t occur to me as I carve out ever heavier shovelfuls and toss them ever farther.

I don’t know what it is about snow-shoveling. I simply can’t stop until every trace of white is erased from every designated surface. Matter of fact, I tend to shovel just a little more each time. Lawn-mowing, same thing. Maybe the urge comes from some ancient human mandate just to go, to seek, to conquer—to level the forest, dam the river, cross the featureless sea.

Or maybe it’s just a guy thing.

All I know is I loved shoveling this morning. The temperature hovered just above freezing—33 degrees (F), according to my temperamental weather station—and it’d snowed for at least twenty-four hours without letup, in mild and windless conditions, giving things the appearance of just the kind of winter world I dreamed of as a kid. Perpetual snow, gentle snow, perfect-for-snowballs snow. I tossed my shoveled snow in an inconvenient direction, even, so I wouldn’t sully its smooth white expanse out front. Snow of the sort that sticks agreeably to your shovel, and whose piled recesses glow a glacial blue. A springlike snow.

I suppose it’s not surprising I saw robins.

Today’s List

1. American crow
2. Tufted titmouse
3. Blue jay
4. American robin
5. Mourning dove
6. Black-capped chickadee