Another Morning in Paradise

17 April 2025: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), White River Junction, Vermont

5:56 a.m. (six minutes before sunrise). Thirty-one degrees, wind West-northwest, five miles per hour, gusting to twenty-three. Sky dull and rumpled, a washed-out gray-blue; far from yesterday's molten orange and red, a lava lamp of color quickly doused. Red maple buds swollen, ready to burst, a maroon cast across the Hill, wispy but promising. Aspen buds prying their sheaths. Beaked hazelnut along the edge of the meadow, a short and skinny-branched shrub in full but subtle glory, dangling fawn-colored catkins (male or staminate flowers), and tiny, tiny magenta pistillates (female flowers), alluring petals short and thin like mini fingers—if the petals were sentences, they'd be very concise. Crocuses are blooming, and the lawn is a patchwork of random colors. Daffodil flower buds are swollen, tubular and yellow, and the leaves are straight, green swords, a Mediterranean spring ephemeral, wild in the woods of southern Europe and North Africa, analogous to Dutchman's breeches and bloodroot in the eastern deciduous forest, blooming in full sunlight before the woods leaf out.

Fresh red oak acorns on the road. Pulverized. Where do they come from?

Twenty-seven species of birds, singing, flying, pounding, provoking. Robin stalks the lawns and screams in the woods. Crow gabs on the way to breakfast, black bird against the gray sky. Raven muddled pronouncements, a larger black bird against the gray sky. Red-shouldered hawk works the wood frog pools, visions of des cuisses de grenouille al fresco. Also: black-capped chickadee; tufted titmouse; red- and white-breasted nuthatches; pine siskin; house finch; American goldfinch; chipping sparrow; song sparrow; winter wren; red-winged blackbird; eastern pheobe, guttural and garbled; barred owl, heard at two in the morning through closed windows; mourning dove, conversive wings; Carolina wren; northern cardinal (both sexes singing).

Department of I Don't Think I Need an Audiologist (yet): golden-crowned kinglet, brown creeper, and cedar waxwing.

Buddy Rich Department: pileated woodpecker invasive drumming, all-encompassing; downy woodpecker, soft drumming (17 beats per second, drumroll less than a second); hairy woodpecker, faster and louder than downy (26 beats per second, drumroll longer than a second); northern flicker, fast and loud, but not nearly as loud as pileated, (23 beats per second); yellow-bellied sapsucker, Western Union telegraph, a stuttered transmission—drumroll, double tap (fast but unevenly spaced), then fades away. Keeping to himself: red-bellied woodpecker.

Wood frogs and peepers, silent as stone.

Travel notes from across the country: Grandchildren are like sunrises; no two are alike. One squeezes into the backyard through the dog door (boy, age two). The other peddles her bike around the cul-de-sac and races her grandfather down the road (girl, age four). I barely won. Both love owls and listen intently to the four or five bass-note decrees that float through the Redlands on the high desert breeze. Both love to eat an almost adult assortment of meals ... with gusto.

We camped for two nights in Rabbit Valley, a few miles east of the Utah line. Hiked into McInnis Canyon. Ate birthday cake in the desert. Listened to rock wrens and canyon wrens. And watch an adult bald eagle pestered by a redtail, turn lazy circles above the Colorado River. As nonchalant as if hounded by a butterfly.

Izzy slept in the tent with me. When the sun went down, we read books and told stories. Aiden slept in the camper with Casey and Becky on the slope above us.

Getting out of the tent to pee in the middle of a black, star-studded night was an Olympic event. Once out, getting back in had its own challenges.