Wissahickon Nature Club 2009

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November

By John Guilday

Courtesy of Alice Guilday

The snows of November, first of the year, are fresh down-white sprawls that remake the land in a single night. It goes to bed October-crisp and rises next morning stilled by the moth-soft snow that runs to the pond's black edge. The beaver's lodge sticks up out of candy-thin ice like a huge and incongruous ice-cream cone. But the snow melts. The woods turn sodden in a day of foggy rain, and then to iron as it freezes deep. The bear, deep-tallowed and sleepy, finds a shallow cave, there to dream of bee trees and honey; but the jumping mice have long gone below the winter, curled chin to chest and dropped off into the almost-death of true hibernation. The red bat has migrated to the south. But many others, the big brown, the long-eared, the least, the cinnamon-colored pipistrelle, hang in mountain caves. The deer are at their best now, sleek-coated and plump, ready for winter. From the north come the birds of winter, and the shrike takes up his hunting perch in the thorn bush. The hunter comes back through the twilight woods, cherry-nosed and chilled, but swinging a gutted rabbit and happy. It snows again, and deep, and the stars draw closer.