Another Morning in Paradise

30 November 2024: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), White River Junction, Vermont

6:54 a.m. (eight minutes before sunrise). Eighteen degrees, wind South-southeast four miles per hour, gusting to eight. A cold but kaleidoscopic sunrise: clear in the east, clouds stacked overhead—rose-infused black and blue frame Hurricane Hill. Then, deepening and morphing into molten red before fading and shifting north. Magenta and fushia—coalescing and dimming. Eventually, color drains and the sky blanched like overcooked greens. White clouds, not too dense, peel along their edges. In the northwest, across the White River, sunlight highlights Jericho Hill and spreads in all directions. On my side of the river (the south), sunlight brushes snow-bent evergreens and the gaunt hardwoods, branches encrusted white, spills down the trunks—a warm, yellowish glow, absent of heat. Eight species of birds: mourning dove, hairy woodpecker, American crow, blue jay, black-capped chickadee, red-breasted and white-breasted nuthatches, and tufted titmouse.

Twenty-one doves gather grit in the road. Disperse when the dog and I appear, air rushing through pointed wings. Stiff feathers vibrate, the sound of group departure, the original whistling in the wind.

Conspicuous by their absences, everything that depends on open ground, meadows under the weight of wet, heavy snow, now frozen. No juncos or goldfinches. No white-throated or song sparrows. Perhaps they'll return ... just not today.

Snow hides voles and white-footed mice. Squirrels sleep in or explore subnivian tunnels. The red-tailed hawk decamped the hillside before the storm—the roadside maple patient but forlorn. Hawk's brown eyes focus elsewhere. Connecticut? New Jersey? Perhaps, perched a light pole above a sea of cars where holiday shoppers park for deals and careless pigeons park for popcorn.

Barred owl hunts deeper in the woods, soft flight in soft light. Then, head-first plunge through brittle snow—a warm mouse on a cold morning.

I have a lot to be thankful for—healthy children and grandchildren. Good friends and family. A readership who values our blue planet, the lone speck of life in a billion square miles of interstellar space. And another gorgeous sunrise across a Christmas card landscape, where chickadees fluff feathers against the cold, eat snow when thirsty, lower their body temperatures at night to conserve energy, foster integrated flocks of multispecies, and never complain, demonstrating survival in challenging times. I take the chickadee’s lessons to heart. I dress in layers (my version of fluffing out). I wear warm socks and a thick hat that covers my ears. I stay hydrated. I socialize … and avoid the news.

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 Guardian, and The Daily Telegraph. I am the author of Backtracking: The Way of 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/