Another Morning in Paradise

07 August 2024: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), White River Jct., Vermont

5:14 a.m.: 58 degrees, wind NNW 2 mph. Leaves are dripping—sounds like rain, feels like rain when I pause under roadside maples. The sky, thickly and asymmetrically overcast, is primarily a bruised gray-blue, with hints of mauve in the east above Moose Mountain. Clouds cut off the ridgelines, and the rising river fog fills the valleys—what's left is a dark band of forest green, a meteorological condensation, puffs of mist rising from every crease and fold in the visible hillsides—an atmospheric landscape stemming from a cold front. Sixteen species of birds, including two warblers (American redstart and common yellowthroat), a restless barred owl that barks in the dark, a loud Carolina wren, a subdued house wren, and a pair of very vocal northern cardinals egging each other on—one sings, then the other—each bolt upright, head back, crest flared. Back and forth, an audio volleyball game without the slam-dunk. I walk past the dueling birds, into and out of their demilitarized zone. Musical hostility—the verification of territory—may be an answer to world peace. Sing, don't fight. It works for the cardinals: no chasing, not a feather shed.

DOR: Another full-grown ring-necked snake, a wisp, two-tone and pencil thin—slate-colored back, tangerine belly and necklace. The fourth ring-neck I've seen this year—three roadkills and an adult male mistaken for a miniature shepherd's hook. I live above a population of subterranean salamander eaters, an obscure venomous, rear-fanged snake with a head and mouth too small to bite a finger and teeth too tiny to dent a callus.

AOR: a parade of slugs.

Later, driving along the base of Hurricane Hill, where the hill levels into the floodplain, I watch a three-year-old bear stroll the edge of the road. All legs, lean, like a marathoner. Midnight black and about the size of a German shepherd. I stop. The bear looks at me and bolts into the hobblebush, green and dripping. The sound of footfalls recedes uphill, the thrash of branches fading in the distance. 

I head toward breakfast with a motley group of friends, absent the here and now, poisoned by the thought that my sunflower feeders are full.