This is turning out to be such a beautiful book, and this is one of my favorite moments yet. I love nature writing in general, and McCarthy is so good at capturing the beauty of nature and mundane humanity at once.
Carillon – a set of fixed chromatically tuned bells sounded by hammers controlled from a keyboard
Sea fan (McCarthy removes the space, but it is not usually written that way) – any of various gorgonian corals with a compressed fan-shaped skeleton
From The Orchard Keeper again:
“The trees were all encased in ice, limbless-looking where their black trunks rose in aureoles of lace, bright seafans shimmering in the wind and tinkling with an endless bell-like sound, a carillon in miniature, and glittering shards of ice falling in sporadic hail everywhere through the woods and marking the snow with incomprehensible runes.”
Jonas David 