A biting chill, sharp as a blade drawn across the throat, clings to every stone of Scarlet Ridge, and the air hangs heavy with the resinous breath of pines and the sodden decay of autumn leaves. The m…
A spectral luminosity, neither dawn's promise nor noon's clarity, pervades the gorge this tenth day of October, 1841. The valley river fog, dense as a burial shroud, clings to the dark pines and grani…
The mercury in my barometer stands at 29.97 inches, motionless as a tombstone, while the thermometer registers 47 degrees Fahrenheit—a chill that seeps through wool and flesh alike. Outside, the sky i…
The Torricellian column within its brass housing has descended to nine and eighty-four hundredths inches, and still it creeps downward with the stealth of a grave-worm, while the hair-hygrometer's ind…
The Torricellian column within its brass housing has begun its fateful descent, the quicksilver slipping from 29.74 inches with each passing quarter-hour, as though the very atmosphere were exhaling i…
The mercury has begun its slow, deliberate descent, slipping from 29.78 to 29.76 inches of mercury since yesterday's dusk—a fall of two-hundredths so languid it might escape a less vigilant eye, yet p…