For me, the challenges of the pandemic have had a silver lining, directly in my sightline. I have stayed home and kept a journal. Daily, I have re-engaged slow fun, the spin of the planet from one corner of a single valley . . . I walked and looked, dogs on their leashes, took notes. Encouraged by friends, the journal evolved into a blog called Homeboy at Home During Coronavirus. Wandering my home ground every dawn, bewitched by sunlight and clouds, quarantining has been more heartfelt than heartache, more joyous than tragic, more centering than scattering. To reacquaint with the little things that I had taken for granted and the bigger things that I had ceased to consider, the entire and ongoing saga of a small valley . . . has been a collateral gift of being homebound.
Every walk has been deliciously different, each an endless manuscript multi-authored by clouds, trees, streams, mammals, amphibians, turtles, and birds. Edited by the seasons and trends, some surreptitious, some blatant, some mysterious. Snakes make cameo appearances, solemn as prophets, unspooling on the fringe of the narrative. Insects may hijack a plotline, of which there are many . . . for a spell. Narrative threads, like cloudscapes, unstable, ever-evolving. Things too small to describe already may have composed the ending. I see such a very small part of my valley’s improbable and dependable details; what tethers me to these walks is the predictability of change. An inexhaustible commodity.
Coyote Hollow, Thetford Center, Vermont
JUNE 4, 2020
5:13 a.m. 49 degrees, wind E 0 mph.
Not a ripple across the pond, not a rustle of a leaf. Slightly foggy, mostly over the wetland and pond, and along the Ompompanoosuc River, softening and smoothing contours, muting color; for a golden moment Coyote Hollow shapeshifts into an even wilder, more remote valley, a resplendent illusion of isolation, primordial North America, revisited . . . four miles from the elementary school, five from the interstate. Beguiled by beauty, I stand still.
A hooded merganser and seven chicks cruise the rim of the pond, in and out of a mesh of fog. See me. Retreat to the far end, flanked by emerging cattails. Huddled and alert, chicks dark with white slashes, like sunlight on water. Hen, frozen in place, her expressive crest either slicked back or pompadoured; in-between, she’s a composite of Little Richard and a Spartan helmet. To reach the pond, the ducks crossed the wetland, into and out of a phalanx of brittle cattails and congestion of stout alders, up a road bank, crossed the road, and then up another bank. The pond offers them a buffet of aquatic insects and big tadpoles, some gulping air, halfway to frogs . . . bon appetit.
JUNE 29
5:10 a.m. 62 degrees, wind NW 2 mph.
Sky: cloud clotted, thick, low, and without highlights; columns and tendrils of fog merge with the floor of the sky; visibility curtailed. A thick river of fog traces the course of the East Branch of the Ompompanoosuc. Truncated worldview: rain-rich green and saturated; leaves washed and shiny. Inside the woods, away from the open road, fairy-tale darkness. From crown to ground, tree trunks rain streaks; some wide, some narrow. Permanent streams infused and on the move; upper gurgles; lower murmurs. But neither approach late April standards and without more rain they’ll likely dry out . . . again.
Birds enthusiastic. Juncos trilling. Thrushes fluting. Black-and-white warbler whispering. Black-throated blue warblers buzzing. House wrens chattering. Ovenbirds screaming. Catbird, a mockingbird with imagination, inventive and not inclined to mimic, never repeats the same phrase in succession. Crows cawing. Doves cooing. Out of the gloom, barred owl hooting. Chestnut-sided warblers rambling. Yellowthroats whistling. Hairy woodpecker in the uppermost branch of a skeletal birch, muted. Phoebes, distinctly guttural, as though clearing their throats. Tanagers and bittern are hushed and hidden. Pewees dispirited whistles. Jays complaining; chicks beg. June on the threshold of July, summer ripening.
JULY 11
5:17 a.m. 72 degrees, wind E 5 mph.
Sky: overcast and constipated; half-moon hides behind a low rack of clouds; spitting rain, pulses of moisture that hasten the walk, reminiscent walking in the dusk. Permanent streams: anemic, less water than yesterday, which was next to nothing. Wetlands: verdant, about as green as possible without an umbrella. Pond: a wind-driven current; tadpoles on the verge of frogs gulp air. In the open, patches of interrupted ferns glisten with raindrops; others, shielded under the canopy, dry.
House wren and tanager sing truncated songs. Black-and-white warbler whistles to himself, quietly and thoughtfully; whenever the wind exerts itself, his melody swallowed by the currents running through the trees. Juncos, trilling and chipping, busy themselves on the ground and in the pines. Redstart finds his voice. A veery’s liquid song cascades out of a tenebrous landscape; a corkscrew put to music – a watery incantation.
A deer snorts in the gloom. Dogs rally, ears up, leashes taut.
A dark, ominous cloud of grackles and redwings, absent since early May, descend on my raspberry patch. An indefatigable hunger. I need a goshawk. Time to overcome inertia and start picking.
JULY 24
5:23 a.m. 62 degrees, wind NW 2 mph.
Sky: foggy. Woods: soaked and dripping. Permanent streams: aroused by rain; fuller and louder than yesterday. Intermittent streams: current bearing. Wetlands: a bowl of mist; far shoreline erased; dew-pendant spiderwebs stitched to reeds glisten. Pond: although the fog appears confused, heads east and then north and then east again, my attention situates.
At the pond, the outflow culvert similar to the bathroom faucet, a constant leak. I stare at the drip. Then, a clatter of pebbles. The dogs stiffen, and an otter, emerging from an adventure in the wetlands, scrambles up the bank, looks askance, and then passes through the drip, up the culvert, and into the pond, flat head just above the surface. Tiny ears. Black button eyes. Nose, black, and full like the dogs’. Back straight and tail, a long, muscular cable, arched. Swims back and forth, trailing a wake behind him; watches me watch him. Otter submerges, leaves behind two bubbles, and rings of undulating ripples, which turn every reflection in a Monet. Surfaces with a fish and a gentle exhale, more a sigh than a blast. Dives, again. A crayfish. Repeats seven more times. Seven more crayfish, one so big that claws stick out of the otter’s mouth. An imperial sportsman – the crunching of bones and shells, an audible breakfast.
Above the otter: catbird cuts lose; kingfisher passes back and forth; ungovernably rattles. Bittern arrives from wetlands and settles on the mowed lawn, bill pointing skyward. Looks at me, skeptically, and sways. Eventually and tentatively, walks down to the shore; nabs brand-new green frogs. A second otter walks out of a bank of ferns. Sees me.
Walks back in.
AUGUST 27
5:57 a.m. 43 degrees, wind ESE 0 mph.
Sky: a painterly sky (at the moment), ribbons, sheets, balls of fluff; a broad brushstroke of peach and rose, a world ablush . . . but not destined to last long; rain on the horizon; heaven on the verge of ruin. Permanent streams: waiting for rain; upper, slowing down, the wear and tear of summer; lower, water desolate, a single thirsty puddle, last stop on the surface; the bleakness of drought. Wetlands: an emaciated cloud, more haze than mist, mid-tree level. Pond: fog machine, westbound vapor follows Horace Greeley’s advice, west and gone; a pair of hooded mergansers paddle leisurely across the pond, veiled in mist.
A snapping turtle, head, tail, and spiky shell barely break the surface of the pond, an archipelago of antiquity. “Turtles are a kind of bird with the governor turned low,” wrote Edward Hoagland, in The Courage of Turtles, a reference to their lethargy (and longevity). In the Hollow, snapping turtles hibernate six or seven months of the year, dreaming turtle dreams tucked beneath a blanket of anoxic mud, either in the main channel of the marsh or in the pond, their pilot lights barely flickering. The ability to endure prolonged exposure to low levels of dissolved oxygen permits snapping turtles to overwinter in sites off-limits to wood turtles, which need much higher levels of dissolved oxygen during dormancy.
A shower of pine cones. A pewee’s farewell whistle. Just off the road, a male turkey herds a flock of females and mature chicks through the woods; stops to look at me. I stop to look at him, erect and bulbous, wings waving as though conducting an orchestra; all the members wander off. In a month, when color engulfs the hills, they’ll be under the clothesline, eating acorns; under the feeders, eating sunflower seeds; in the pasture eating numb crickets and grasshoppers … a predicable front yard event that makes shifting seasons appealing.
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