Another Morning in Paradise

07 February 2025: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), White River Junction, Vermont

6:48 a.m. (ten minutes before sunrise). Twenty-four degrees, wind West-southwest nine miles per hour, gusting to twenty-three (maybe more). Trees in motion speak in tongues. Yesterday's four inches of snow, today's meteorological dervishes—whirling up from the meadow, cones of cold smoke. Hemlock and pine limbs shimmy, squalls everywhere, a collapsing and renovating landscape of white. Sky, a mother-of-pearl luster—whiteish, pinkish, blueish, grayish—a bright affectation on a cold, windy morning.

Six crows pushed by the wind, steer northeast. Barely flapping, wings and tails as rudders, a crooked flight to breakfast. Raven slices through the turbulence. Two titmice whistle, vocal darts hijacked by the wind. Chickadees silent. Four doves and a blue jay gather grit from the recently sanded road.

Woodpeckers (hairy and downy) drummed yesterday; refrain today. Clinging to resonant limbs? Unlikely, too much like bronco riding.

Inside the woods, white-breasted nuthatch calls, barely audible over the conversing wind.

Outside the woods, red-breasted nuthatch visits the feeder.

Department of Indoor Activity: 05 February 2025

9:25 a.m. Twenty feet off the deck, the barred owl sleeps on a horizontal red maple branch in full sunlight. I sit at the dining room table, watching, armed with a notebook, pen, and binoculars.

9:27 a.m. Owl turns its head.

9:29 a.m. Owl rotates its head, eyes closed. Must be listening—beak gleams in the sunlight, a golden yellow, much brighter than I thought.

9:36 a.m. Owl rotates head to right, eyes open.

9:41 a.m. Owl watches gray squirrel scurry along deck railing.

9:44 a.m. I scream and chase squirrel, who jumps off the deck, runs across the lawn and climbs a hemlock behind the owl. (Hopefully, my neighbors are all at work.) Owl watches the episode and appears to empathize with me. It turns its head and studies the retreating squirrel.

A steady stream of feeder birds ignore the owl.

10:09 a.m. Turning head, owl tracks returning gray squirrel. I refill my coffee cup.

10:15 a.m. Gray squirrel climbs up maple trunk directly behind owl. Owl perks up, eyes wide. Spins head and stares at squirrel.

10:23 a.m. Owl pumps up and down. About to do something other than sit—hyper-alert.

10:29 a.m. Owl does something! Dives at a red squirrel under the deck.

10:31 a.m. Squirrel escapes, and owl returns to its vigil. I need more coffee.

11:16 a.m. Fluffed-out owl basks in full sun like an old man on the boardwalk at Coney Island. I need a nap.

12:32 p.m. White-breasted nuthatch forges on the branch two feet above owl. Owl glances up.

12:39 p.m. Looking for something to do, owl preens wings.

12:44 p.m. Passing hawk, tail on fire, sees owl. Circles twice. Redtail does not go unnoticed. Owl looks up, rotating its head, following the flight.

1:00 p.m. Black raven in blue sky, circling. Both owl and I look up. I stand up. Owl remains fixed to branch.

1:34 p.m. Sun’s gone—owl in the shade.

1:41 p.m. Below the deck, red squirrel crosses snow. Owl, triggered, dives. A minute later, retreating into the woods, limp squirrel in tow.

After four hours and sixteen minutes, moored to a branch, patiently waiting for a meal, an ambush predator makes a kill. I’m sure I had something else to do today; I just can’t recall what it was.

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 the 14th of 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.

For those so inclined, here is a link to preorder:

https://bookshop.org/a/13094/9798989178421