Detail Diary, Vol #4

Mostly leaves, light, and starlings

October 22 - November 11, 2023

Dear friend,

Thanks to a five-Sunday month you get three weeks of Diary Detail in this recap. It captures, perhaps, the peak of autumn here. I’ve been so moved by the daily evolution of color outside my office window, the deepening, the bronzing, the ambering, and the way sun and gray and rain wash hourly through those colors. It’s almost like watching a timelapse in real time, contradiction in terms though that is. It makes my heart ache a little, how brief this particular magic is, what a small slice of the year. But it’s not over yet.

The starlings seem to have moved on in the last week, at least from the campus, which also makes my heart ache a little. I’ll miss their wings and their swerves and their companionable noise in trees opening up portals above my head. (See especially #46.) They seem to have been replaced by a returning clamor of rooks (#59), though I didn’t see them the next day. Maybe they were just checking in on their spring territory.

Here is your usual reminder that this post is best viewed on the web or in the app, unless your email provider manages to show all the photos and text in the email!

---

And a few seconds later, the entire cedar gives up the ghost as they burst back into the air.

Starlings are the conjuring of souls in and out of trees.

Video: Listen to starlings

Video: Listen to rooks