7:11 a.m. (sunrise one minute earlier than yesterday). 12 degrees (cold
lurks inside my jacket), wind WSW 2 mph. Sky: a faint blush across a
rolling aerial landscape, silver-white and grandbaby-blue. Permanent
streams: water against ice, shapes dynamic and endless, the Fourth of July
in the lungs of winter, colorless but gorgeous. An adult pacifier for the
easily amused. Wetlands: across the glacial marsh, deep inside the
dull-green fortress, pileated hammers a pine or spruce or fir. One or two
volleys per minute, ten to twelve drums per volley. Faster at the beginning
and at the end. Carries a mile or more and may be given by either sex. A
pileated answers, derisive laughter from the vicinity of the disemboweled
maple. Pond: thick ice under a gelid crust of snow. A seasonal holding
pattern until March, lentic version of the doldrums.

Up before the sun, raven calls, loudly and repeatably, black below the
cloudscape. Red-breasted nuthatch on bark-less aspen. Brown creeper on
cherry. A squad of chickadees, squalling in the alders and hemlocks,
recover stashed seeds and torpid insects. Three doves pick grit from the
driveway. Flush when I appear, an over-amped exodus on noisy wings.

Female pileated chisels deeper into the roadside maple, an artist *immersed* in
her work (literally). Wood chips everywhere. The tree may fall before she's
done. Responds to her partner's love drumming . . . delirious burst of *wok,
wok, wok, wok, wok, wok*. The valley belongs to them. And now, as January
rounds the corner, they proclaim ownership every morning.

Above the southwestern corner of the marsh, a hot-air balloon, quilted
patches of black interspersed by a palette of color. Balloon's engine
coughs and coughs and then falls silent. Floats dreamlike above the pines.
I pause, my attention hijacked, and lift my binoculars. A lone man stands
in the balloon, dressed like me. Brown bear of a coat, balaclava, and
mittens. Man and the raven look down on a wrinkled landscape, white with
tired snow. I wave, grateful for human contact.