Only when I head outside do winter’s consolations become clear. The small ground birds rustling in the leaf litter are suddenly visible. I can tell the song sparrows from the field sparrows, and the Carolina wrens from the winter wrens. The contours of the earth emerge, fold upon fold, as though I had been seeing before in only two dimensions. On the lake trail, I turn toward the belted kingfisher’s rattling call, and there is the kingfisher himself, his shaggy crest scraping the blue sky from a branch high in the trees.
