5:34 a.m. (sunrise one minute later than yesterday). 59 degrees, wind SE 2 mph, a relocation of nighttime raindrops, leaves shaking and dripping. Sky: southwest, away from the rivers, the half-moon, high, gleams through Manitoba smoke. In the northeast, an ascending sun obscured by river fog. Overhead, the underbelly of clouds rimmed in light, a silver funnel converging where I think the sun should be. Looking north across the White River, into a soft confusion of brume, the ridgeline behind a screen of silk, everything else erased. Two flocks of blackbirds skim the treetops, the density of the morning, a glimpse of autumn, flying northwest. Horizontal branches of box elder hung with dew, jewelry of the rain.
Flowering: mullein, stalks of small yellow flowers above rosettes of diaper-soft leaves; black-eyed Susan; Queen Anne's lace; last of the ox-eyed daisies.
AOR: chipping sparrow eating ragweed seeds; red fox, in no particular hurry, trots up a neighbor's driveway (noses to the road, dogs interpret what they missed). Deer tracks. An adventurous slug.
The world belongs to waxwings and goldfinches, nesting in the thickets. The former eats berries, the latter seeds. A male hummingbird perched in gray birch, gorget dull as dusk, waits for the sun. Bunting in birch eats seeds. Yellowthroat in a lilac, familiar song, a different shrub. I knew him from the alders of Coyote Hollow, on the threshold of a marsh; here, on Hurricane Hill, on the verge of a dooryard, companionable as a chickadee. Catbird kvetching. Crow hollering. A blue jay mimics a red-shouldered hawk, a barb in the wind.
Along the edge of an ungrazed paddock, a duet in blue. Bunting and bluebird.
A promising landscape, like an auspicious first date, filled with possibility. Untempered and untethered, indefatigably fresh as first light. I saw my first indigo bunting in an Indiana hedgerow. My first eastern bluebird on a Jones Beach dune, the bulk of Long Island hung heavily across the bay. Mornings on Hurricane Hill, another edition of the universal story. A fetching cast of characters all trying to Keep On Keepin' On . . . and I'm part of the ensemble.
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A lifelong naturalist and Yankee fan, Ted Levin follows a trail blazed by John Burroughs and John Muir, neither of who paid baseball much attention. His work has appeared in Audubon, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, and The Daily Telegraph, among many other publications. His nonfiction works include Backtracking: The Way of Naturalist, Blood Brook: A Naturalist’s Home Ground, and Liquid Land: A Journey Through the Florida Everglades, which won the Burroughs Medal in 2004, the highest literary honor awarded to an American nature writer. E. O. Wilson called America’s Snake, Ted’s most recent book, beautifully written [demonstrating] just how good nature literature can be. He divides his time between the deck and the road.
Great to see you continue the song of life, with a new cast of characters but still the same music! The bunting in the hedgerow, the bluebird on a dune--and now with you on a VT hill. Plus I happen to be partial to a fox--I felt so honored when one curled up under my riverside bench in Manchester MI and took a nap!
Thanks for sharing--may these special moments continue to accumulate.
A mother bear and twin cubs are the immeasurable gifts of a summer morning. Lucky you!