The early November morning was bright and cold. Frost coated the grasses and brown goldenrod crowns with white fur. I tended the campfire, feeding it small balsam branches from the latest blow-downs, placing them over the hardwood teepee fire blazing in the fieldstone circle. The fire crackled as it rippled over the balsam needles, cascading into a tall, orange flame.

Nearby, the log cabin’s chimney slowly chugged smoke. Inside, my husband was creating a lumberjack breakfast on the wood cookstove. I knew that black, cast iron pans sizzled with delectable treats. And the coffeepot would be sitting on a trivet, hot, and occasionally perking up a blurb of brown coffee into its glass dome. My husband would be stepping over our black dog, lying underfoot next to the black stove, soaking in the heat and waiting to help clean up spills or drips.

After a while I stopped feeding the fire. I warmed myself on one of the chainsaw log benches near the fire, watching the dancing, hot colors of the flames. I sipped hot coffee from my brownware mug, fishing out gray ashes with my fingertip, watching morning happen.

Down the slope, viewed through the bare branches of shrubs and trees, the lake gleamed. The water lay still and silent, broken only by an occasional flash of a fish surfacing, cracking the water into a spiral of circles. In the distance, at the point of the cove, three ducks swam and dove.

Dissipating clouds released the rising sun and morning light glittered gold on the lake. Then the reflection of trees on the far shore became perfect in the still water, developing like an old Polaroid photograph: fuzzy, blotchy shapes changing to a clear vision of skeletal hardwoods and spiky evergreens.

The still air started to move, whooshing through the trees and puffing smoke at me from the campfire. Whichever side of the fire I retreated to, the wind shifted and sent the smoke my way.

As I walked away from the fire to breathe freely, I felt the chilled air envelop me and seep through the seams of my wool jacket. Tucking my arms in close to my body, I watched the bare branches of the gnarly maples swaying and the dark limbs of the white birches softly sweeping the sky. Dried leaves swirled down until they caught on the ground.

I began to hear a chattering noise like a flock of small birds, an odd sound on a cold November day in northern New England. I looked around, but didn’t see any birds. The tree branches were empty.

I started to shiver and moved back to the fire to thaw out, waltzing around away from the smoke, sipping my lukewarm coffee. I heard more chattering and looked to the lake. The only birds were the three ducks, now farther out in the lake. When the wind subsided, the chattering sound let up. As the wind picked up, the chattering became faster and louder.

Curious, I followed the sound down to the cove and looked around. The perfect reflection of trees on the far shore was now sliced and jumbled by the wavelets. Then I saw what was chattering.

The sun and waves were breaking up the thin layer of ice on the lake edge. The chattering came from the ice shards sliced off by the waves and washed over the top of the remaining solid ice edge. They hit and slid against each other as the waves washed them together and pulled them apart. I stood watching the November ice shatter and crumble, the ice edge reduced by each wave, and listened to its musical decline.

Then, hearing a call to breakfast, I climbed the hill through wet grass, dribbling the last of the cold coffee from my mug onto the ground. Behind me, the fading ice-chatter sounded like a flock of birds flying off to a warmer world.

By Arlene Laurenitis, Coverts Cooperator