Via Negativa

Thirty-seven degrees and clear at a quarter till six. Again, I’m dazzled by the sight of the crescent moon hanging close to Venus: not something one is likely to get too many opportunities to enjoy in the course of a lifetime, much as we may like to think otherwise.

The moon’s down to its last little sliver, and the dark portion glows dimly with earthshine. I think I remember reading that it was Newton who first correctly identified this effect, which seems awfully recent for such a basic insight. But perhaps it was too counter-intuitive. The effects of the moon on the earth are many and undeniable – ask any woman. Even the land has measurable tides. The moon, in turn, is in thrall to our much greater gravitational pull. Should it surprise us, then, that its nights are brightened with the light reflected from this benighted planet?

At six the sound of a pickup truck: one of our hunter friends, parking over at Margaret’s. Fifteen minutes later a pair of great-horned owls starts dueting farther down the hollow. At 6:18 the first twitter of a songbird – probably goldfinch. At 6:20, a second hunter’s truck. By 6:30 I can hear the full compliment of songs and calls from sparrows, nuthatches, wrens. The owls fall silent. A single deer grazes just in from the wood’s edge, near the tulip tree – a yearling, by the look of her. Chances are she’ll make it through this hunting season unscathed.

Three song sparrows engage in a singing contest. The reductionist view that says birds sing to attract mates or mark territory hardly does justice to the countless uses to which a single song may be put, I think. But is it really accurate to consider this (or any) birdsong as one, basic theme capable of several variations? Sonograms reveal many differences from bird to bird and song to song indistinguishable to a human ear. And even the variations I can tell apart are enough to maintain my interest.

At any rate, ornithologists say an individual song sparrow may sing between six and twenty-four different songs. I listen as the closest of the three, perched in the French lilac bush, varies his song over the course of several minutes. Nasal at first and a little slurred, it turns more and more crystalline, as if to match the rapidly brightening sky.

Out on the porch at 6:30, coffee and a cigarette. Thirty-two degrees and clear as a bell (interesting synaesthesic simile, that!). Venus and the crescent moon are less than a hand’s breadth apart.

The birds are very active and vocal this morning, in contrast with yesterday. Carolina wren begins the dawn chorus, as usual, followed by dueling song sparrows, a white-throated sparrow, juncos and chickadees.

Out again at 9:40. The sun’s in my eyes; I go get a ball cap. It seems a little odd even to myself that I don’t own a pair of sunglasses, but I just don’t like what they do to the light. Besides, this is the first day for a visual treat that I’ll be savoring for many months to come, as long as the sun stays low in the sky and my view up the ridgeside remains unimpeded: the sunlight glinting off the waxy leaves of mountain laurel. Picture a hillside of white light on dark green leaves, the straight dark trunks of trees and the blue sky beyond.

I ponder the paradox that, with the leaves gone, I actually have more opportunities for sunbathing in the winter than in the summer. Not that I’m going to take off very many clothes, of course. At any rate, the strong sun feels good on my face, despite the chill in the air: it’s just what the doctor ordered for my stuffed sinuses. And I’m cheered by the exuberant calls of chickadees. It amuses me to think about the likely gap between the way we perceive these “clowns and acrobats of the avian world” and the way they probably see themselves: as scouts and vigilantes, often the first and most fearless at scolding predators. Last week when I burned trash, three chickadees flew in to chirp their defiance at this dangerous intruder, darting as close as they dared to the leaping flames.

I wonder if the chickadee’s more wistful-sounding fee bee call is ever heard before the turning of the year? This is a good example of the pathetic fallacy, I guess: what strikes our ears as somewhat mournful almost certainly carries wholly different connotations for its author. Given that it seems a response to a lengthening photoperiod, it probably expresses excitement at the approach of another breeding season. In fact, given the way music can affect emotions, I’m willing to bet that singing their two-note fee bee song helps stimulate the production of hormones. (Any takers?)

12:45 p.m. It’s now forty-seven degrees in the shade. With the addition of the strong sunlight, that’s warm enough for the birds to bathe in the stream. The first pools below the butternut tree are, as always, the preferred spots, and juncos and goldfinches take turns there. The male goldfinches are now in their duller, gold-green winter plumage, but they still look spectacular as they immerse first their heads than their bodies, flinging water about with flailing wings. Half a minute of this and then it’s up into the butternut tree to dry in the sun and the light breeze, shaking the water from their tails and wings, sticking their breast feathers out like pins in a pincushion.

From watching the birds I’m led to admire the tree itself. I love the way this butternut changes color so dramatically at different times of day, even without rain to bring out the lichens. Whereas in the morning the trunk was a gunmetal gray, now it’s a river of shining white broken by thin black furrows. It’s almost like having my own, backyard Uluru.

I go out again at 2:00, and the squirrel I call the Thinker comes and sits in his usual spot. I guess he’s decided I’m not much of a threat.

2:18. The resident naturalist emerges from the woods. (Hi, Mom!)

2:25. I’m still here. There are falling leaves to watch, you know. It’s amazing how long it can take a large red oak leaf to reach the ground. Here’s one sailing down from the ridgetop, where the harder winds can scoop leaves right off the ground and send them spiraling hundreds of feet into the air. It rotates on its axis while dodging left and right, like a prizefighter crossed with a ballet dancer.

Seconds later two military jets – F16s, I think – come roaring over the treetops right on the other side of the powerline, about two hundred yards from where I sit. When the thunder dies away and my heartbeat returns to normal, I notice for the first time how really quiet things are this afternoon. The winds and barometric pressure are just right to screen out all but the sound of train whistles (which I really wouldn’t want to do without). I wonder, too, with a bit of envy, how intimately those pilots must know the topography: every wooded fold and wrinkle in this old, old land.

A quarter till three and my afternoon coffee is starting to kick in. Despite my head cold I feel so good I could cry – I don’t know what keeps me from it. Nobody’s watching except for that squirrel, and he looks like the close-mouthed sort. This happiness seems wholly without justification – an irrational exuberance, as Alan Greenspan is fond of saying about an overheated market. Well, but of course I can feel as justified in my happiness as anyone else. It’s simply that joy without cause brings a special burden on its owner, I think, one that isn’t exhausted by the mere recounting of it. The world asks me for poems. I wonder if I shouldn’t take this vocation a little more seriously?

Thirty-four degrees at dawn, with small flakes of snow falling into my coffee. Everything’s quiet except for a small flock of chickadees, irrepressible as ever.

The biggest change is that my beautiful aspens have all been stripped bare. I feel bereft.

The birches and cherry trees that still held onto their leaves yesterday have been similarly stripped, but all the others – willow, elms, lilac, oaks – seem unchanged.

Still snowing at 8:00: the same small, widely scattered flakes. And there’s still nothing stirring, aside from the chickadees. With the benefit of full daylight, I realize that the view through the trees up to the top of the ridge is much clearer this morning; more oaks have lost their leaves overnight than I had initially thought.

Thus, in the space of 24 hours, my horizon has been drastically expanded. Though given a choice, I think I’d prefer the sheltering closeness of the dense forest all year ’round, much as I love winter. Maybe I should move some place farther north, with lots of evergreens?

The clouds are thinning; blue patches appear here and there. I can hear a nuthatch yank yanking. But this stiff breeze and my general lack of toughness make it hard for me to stay out on the porch for long. The woodstove beckons.

Two hours later, snowflakes are still in the air, swirling down from fast-moving clouds. The sun shines full in my face for 30 seconds. Sun and snow alternate for the next ten minutes, until the snow finally peters out. Pacing up and down to stay warm, I watch the cloud shadows racing by. On this high porch lined with railings on two sides, I feel a bit like the captain of a slow-moving ship.

At half past noon I’m ambushed by a flurry of sneezes. For the rest of the day, I can’t go for five minutes without blowing my nose. Now I know why I felt so vulnerable to the cold this morning. The virus was already busy trying to control my thoughts: Go inside, where it’s warm, where the germ can spread!

There are analogies and then there are analogies. To say that governments and corporations are like viruses infecting the body politic is to gain a real insight into the way so-called evil replicates itself in this world.