7:12 a.m. (sunrise two minutes earlier than yesterday). 9 degrees, wind NW
12 mph (almost feels like January in Vermont). Perpetual motion: oak and
beech leaves, a seasonal performance below swaying pines. Sky: swept clean
and clear, pink wash along the southern and eastern perimeters, elsewhere
blue. Winter sunlight spills down Robinson Hill, radiant and inspirited, an
elixir of the Gods. Permanent streams: several small windows on otherwise
hidden flows. Leaves twitter. Water mutters. Wetlands: the resting place of
cold air. Unobstructed, brutal wind rips across the marsh, vibrates limbs,
stirs trees, which chatter and creak like cold teeth. Keeps squirrels
indoors, bundled in leaves, home swaying to the rhythm of the wind. Pond:
red pines speaking, everything else quietly frozen. Surface visited by a
snow machine.

Raven, born for mornings like this, courses high above the marsh. No
flapping, just a partial inward squeeze of the wings. Then, full-extension,
tilting and turning, gliding. Rides the northwind above the reeds. An
occasional *croak*. Plays in cold air. Durable black feathers up to the
task. Melanin, the dark pigment in bird feathers, does not direct
absorbed heat toward the body, does little to warm a bird (several
desert birds, including ravens, are jet black). Melanin, a tough protein,
protects feathers from wear and tear. Think the tip of seabird wings—gulls,
terns, albatrosses, puffins, and so forth.

Two ravens together, wingtip to wingtip. The tandem flight of lovers.
Rocking and rolling. A courting couple. Their voices, deep echoing honks,
louder than the wind, animates the valley on a frigid morning—a
heartwarming display of affection, which, apparently, chickadees and jays
ignore.

Female pileated standing in maple cavity, a closet of her own design.
Tongue patroling ant tunnels. Chips everywhere.

Summer of 1997, baseball and brown bears: standing on the edge of a lake on
Alaska's Katmai Peninsula, Henry Aaron, who's about to go salmon fishing,
signs an autograph for ten-year-old Casey, an aspiring shortstop, who
says, *Thank
you, Mr. Aaron*. Says Aaron, *Not everyone remembers to say 'thank you*.'
The next morning, still marveling at having watched Aaron speak to my boy,
I stood on a wooden bridge over a stream and photographed airborne
sockeyes jumping a small waterfall, past a gauntlet of brown bears. My face
was buried in the viewfinder, Henry Aaron, who arrived on the bridge,
inadvertently brushed against my tripod. Thinking of you two days after
your death, a spectacular ballplayer, a quiet humanitarian, humbled by
Jackie Robinson, enamored by Martin Luther King, who still had a moment for
a ten-year-old.

*Thank you, Mr. Aaron*.