Another Morning in Paradise
21 December 2024: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), White River Junction, Vermont
7:07 a.m. (thirteen minutes before sunrise). Fourteen degrees, wind North-northwest 8 miles per hour, gusting to 22—limbs in motion, scraping and clacking, moaning. A noisy, snowy Winter Solstice. Sky: an untextured blue-gray, a vague blush in the east (where the sun should be). In the west, the waning gibbous moon, three-quarters full, veiled by atmospheric scree. Last night, the softness of two inches of fresh powder. This morning, the sting of micro-flurries. The wind pries snow from hemlock and pine, puffs of white swirling around resolute evergreens. On hardwood trunks and branches, white spots and skinny outlines stay put. Visibility constricted—a hint of the New Hampshire ridgeline; hills above the White River softened by mist and falling snow. A black-and-white world—even hemlocks are a dark, grim green—a landscape needing a large-format, black-and-white photographer calls for an Ansel Adams or a Clyde Butcher. I need a burst of color, a cardinal, or an errant sunbeam.
In search of the sun, two crows, screened by limbs, fly east, conversing above a meadow and below the canopy, in and out of view. I stick with the crows; they're all I have for now.
Then, hairy woodpecker, a rollicking flight from one oak to another above a broad meadow. Calling, calling, calling. Beyond the undulating flight of the woodpecker, chickadees and white-breasted nuthatches investigate bark and tufts of lichen. Blue jays, in roadside maples and distant pines, switch trees. En route to maples, one jay enters an isolated rhododendron, long leaves curled and drooping. And stays put.
On a dull morning, the owl, facing away from the road, big head swiveling, almost a rotation. Dark eyes and keen ears penetrate the forest's secrets. The owl waits with Biblical patience—endures the wind and the cold, bursts of dislodged snow, five months alone, and relishes dark, ungovernable winter nights.
A cardinal in the lilacs calls (but remains hidden ... a redeemable promise for the coming year).
Tomorrow, with the imperceptible brightening of a dark and frigid landscape comes the monumental brightening of my landscape. I leave for Colorado in the morning. Two boys, one stepson, one daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren, nine days under the same roof. My granddaughter, Izzy, wants to see an owl. My grandson, Aiden, is too young to know he wants to see an owl. I've signed on to get him enthused. Owls are virtually everywhere (except Antarctica) and available to everyone. To see one, you must be patient, lucky ... or both.
Owls are associated with stars, which renders them magical, for we’re creatures of light associated with the sun and incandescence. They see what we cannot see. Hear what we cannot hear. Know the coming and going of worlds beyond our senses.
To teach a child to love their homeground is a calling of the highest order. Let the hooting begin. (and, if that doesn't work, there's always a pillow fight).
Happy Solstice ... see you in the New Year.
As a lifelong naturalist and Yankee fan, I follow a trail blazed by John Burroughs and John Muir, neither of whom paid much attention to baseball. My work has appeared in Audubon, Sierra, Sports Illustrated, National Wildlife, National Geographic Traveler, National Geographic Books, The New York Times, Newsday, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Guardian, and The Daily Telegraph. I am the author of Backtracking: The Way of A Naturalist (1987), Blood Brook: A Naturalist's Home Ground (1992), and Liquid Land: A Journey Through the Florida Everglades (2003), among other works of nonfiction. I received the Burroughs Medal in 2004, the highest literary honor awarded to an American nature writer. E. O. Wilson called America's Snake: The Rise and Fall of the Timber Rattlesnake (2016) a beautifully written book [that] demonstrates just how good nature literature can be.
The Promise of Sunrise: Finding Solace in a Broken World, born during the pandemic here in Substack, will be published by Green Writers Press in March 2025.
https://greenwriterspress.com/book/the-promise-of-sunrise-finding-solace-in-a-broken-world/