Another Morning in Paradise
12 February 2025: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), White River Junction, Vermont
6:43 a.m. (eight minutes before sunrise). Six degrees, wind Northwest three miles per hour, gusting to four (a subtle gust). Cloudless sky not without color, all delicate: lavender across the northeast and northwest; orange sherbert in the east and south; and the sun in the middle, slowly climbing above the Connecticut River Valley, a dense scoop of orange casting fingers of light across the summit of Hurricane Hill, through the evergreens.
I salute the sun, eyes wide, and wonder if the ever-increasing cold light—day-by-day—will do for me what it does for chickadees, titmice, and white-breasted nuthatches—less melatonin secreted by the light-sensitive pineal glands allows for increased testosterone production. And more testosterone coursing through their bodies lights the fuse of the breeding season. Singing. Chasing and behaving like teenagers.
The first chickadee calls at 6:48 a.m. Sings at 7:04.
The first titmouse sings at 7:00.
The first white-breasted nuthatch sings at 6:58.
Six crows fly northwest, a loose, black scattering across the bright sky. Jays and doves, everywhere and busy.
The Barred Owl has been absent from my backyard maple since last Sunday's eight more inches of snow. Why? No red squirrels are under the deck; they're in tunnels beneath the snow, feeding on caches of seeds and nuts stored during the fall. Barred owls are ambush predators, perching and pouncing. Timber rattlesnakes, which I've observed for many years, sit and wait for days by the runway of mice; barred owls wait for hours (an owl has a much higher metabolism than a rattlesnake and eats much more frequently) on a branch above where rodents convene.
The survival rate for an owl, particularly a young owl, decreases with the severity of the winter. In an average winter, approximately thirty percent of first-year barred owls survive. If the winter is harsh, the percentage is lower. Prey vulnerability and accessibility determine the survival rates of predators. In other words, the prey controls the predator, not vice versa. For an owl to wait above an area empty of mice would be like me waiting for a table outside a closed restaurant.
Across the White River, sunlight fingers the tops of hills and spills slowly down. A cold butterscotch-yellow descent ignites a flock of chickadees on the south side of the river, my side. The flock disassembles in a meadow close to the road in a rhododendron still in shade. Birds chase and call amid dull green, stiffly curled leaves. Watching them is like watching a flock of ping-pong balls endlessly bouncing. A bush set in motion. Birds, impossible to count.
Breath seeping through my face gaiter, I stroll home, mumbling a happy song. What the hell, I live vicariously—more snow in two days.
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.
Beginning on 14 March 2020, at the onset of the pandemic lockdown, the day after I returned home from Costa Rica, I started writing a daily journal—part natural history, part memoir, and part commentary—which appeared on Substack. Since the 25 August 2021 post, I edited the 526 entries (deleting, combining, modifying) into a forthcoming book, The Promise of Sunrise: Finding Solace in a Broken World, to be published by Green Writers Press on the vernal equinox (20 March 2025).
Jennette Fournier's illustrations, many originals (otter, bobcat, chickadee, chickadee, chickadee, black bear among them), a playful Winnie-the-Poohesque map, and a commissioned watercolor cover grace the book.
Promise is about how I spent my unplanned, unbargained Covid vacation wandering through a small Vermont valley, living alone in the house where I raised my boys and my wife, Linny, died.
From the pre-publicity PR: Rich with keen observation and vivid emotion, this chronicle is a tale of the fundamental human experience as part of a larger ecosystem during a tumultuous time. Levin reminds us of the importance of slowing down, looking around, and accessing nature even in the most unexpected places. All that’s left to do is lean in.
For those so inclined, here is a link to preorder: