Gully-washer. Duck weather. Cats and dogs. Oddly, I saw no ducks. I did hear crows and jays hollering up the hill out back. And at one point I happened to be looking out the window when a herring gull soared past. At least it was kind of warm.

Again, I had much work to do. But that didn’t stop us from making our daily trek up Beech Hill, Jack and I—albeit rather late in the afternoon. I figured we had daylight, though, and the rain had let up. As we got up South Street within sight of the hill, a thick fog had descended out of nowhere. I figured at least I’d get some fog photos. Those can be lovely sometimes.

A lone hiker had similar thoughts, apparently, and had just started along the trail as we pulled in. But no sooner had we slogged through the puddles near the parking lot and began climbing the first rise than a wind-whipped rain began pelting us from the southeast. I saw no birds, heard no birds—and wasn’t much surprised that they wouldn’t be crazy enough to venture out in such conditions. Figured I’d get a shot of the photogenic birch, at least, but the weather was coming from just that direction, and I ended up with raindrops on my lens. Frustrating.

Higher up, and the rain got stronger. Low clouds were moving in from offshore. The fog had vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

Toward the summit, we met the lone hiker coming back down. I’m not sure she had managed to reach Beech Nut. “Nice weather,” I said with a laugh.

Then a light appeared in the southwest: a clearing patch, with dramatic clouds encircling a hazy orange sun. I turned my camera that way—and ended up with raindrops on my lens. Frustrating. So frustrating, in fact, that I heard myself cursing.

But as we stood on the porch of Beech Nut, the rain stopped suddenly, and the sun blazed through a hole in the clouds above the southern ridgeline—a hole that revealed distant blue, even—and as the sod roof dripped, a rainbow appeared in the northeast sky, its great bow extending from horizon to horizon, crowning the little spruce grove. I couldn’t even photograph the whole thing with my widest-angle.

I went from cussin’ to feeling giddy as the YouTube double-rainbow guy in a mere minute or so. There’s a lesson there somewhere.

Then coming back down, to top things off, I heard a blue jay’s cries coming from the base of the southern slope. And then the call of a flicker. And the faint, high-pitched tweets of some small perching bird (at first I thought it a robin but decided it was a lark or maybe some kind of migrating finch). And then a chickadee. And a kinglet. By the time we reached the parking lot, the clouds had again closed in and it’d begun again, lightly, to rain.

Ascending, I was a pessimist expecting no birds at all on my list; descending, I was a good ol’ sheepish optimist again.

Tonight, the clouds got thin and then vanished altogether. The dark world remains wet, but the waxing moon and Jupiter are doing some kind of astronomical dance up there.

Beech Hill List
Beginning at 3:15 p.m., I hiked the open trail.

1. Blue jay (voice)
2. Northern flicker (voice)
3. Unidentified passerine (voice)
4. Black-capped chickadee (voice)
5. Golden-crowned kinglet (voice)

Elsewhere

6. American crow
7. Herring gull