6:58 a.m. 28 degrees, wind WNW 0 mph. Sky: a thick, disingenuous cloud
cover, horizon to horizon, should have held down yesterday's heat. Rolls
and folds of blue-gray, edge to edge. A heat leakage. Permanent streams:
iceless, full-throated gurgles and babbles, a resonant and gushing hillside
run, clear as a windowpane. White-breasted nuthatch flies across the upper
stream, lands on a thin maple. *Yank. Yank. *Wanders up the trunk, picking
at things I can't see. Ruffed grouse, an explosive exodus, a whirring of
wings, startles. Rivets our attention. Wetlands: nacreous reeds bent with
frost, isles glazed, a sugar-coated marsh. Pond: ice thicker. Otter
long-gone. No fresh sign. Dogs engage in old spoor, noses to the ground,
snorting. I review yesterday's holes, still evident. Crayfish claws, traced
with frost, engulfed in ice, one day older, one day grimmer. An artifact of
a fondness for shellfish. Otter could be miles away . . . the Ompompanoosuc
(either East or West branch); below Union Village Dam, where the branches
couple and flow flatly to the Connecticut; or, perhaps, the Connecticut
itself, north or south. Maybe he's in the three ponds beyond the eastern
rim of Coyote Hollow; or the necklace of marshes to the west. Or my
neighbor's trout pond for a fish filet.

Otter: the lingering gift of a nomadic visitor, absentee enchantment like
silent chimes. Just to know that our paths crossed yesterday, hours apart,
my enthusiasm boosted and sustained for sunrise walks. I *never* know who
wandered through the corrugated countryside until I look. Eyes wide and
*still *awed by the surprises and simplicity of home.