6:33 a.m. (sunrise two minutes earlier than yesterday). 30 degrees (warmest dawn since January 16), wind W 3 mph. Sky: bright, clear, and peached infused in the south, gridlocked elsewhere . . . then, twenty minutes later, clouds reassemble into a white, silver-lined flotilla, an eastward drift. Quarter-inch fresh, wet snow sticks to everything, even paper-thin, almost weightless beech leaves, trembling like nervous frosted flakes. Permanent streams: upper, below the snowmobile bridge, three oval openings lengthen and widen; lower, in limbo. Wetlands: above the marsh, the leading edge of clouds highlighted by the sun, pileated takes the morning off. Pond: blade marks of an ambitious skater on a brief, friction-filled run.
For fifty years, I thought titmice whistled peter, peter. Today, they sound like cheering in the House of Commons . . . hear, hear. Hear, hear. Chickadees whistling, but not wholeheartedly—softer, disinclined to be repetitive. White-breasted nuthatches in full voice, short, nasal, single pitch. Does for the pileated what blue jay does for the red-shouldered hawk; renders a sober version of louder, more raucous masters of the airwaves. The second morning in a row, a high crow headed north spills low caws over the marsh.
Standing in the middle of the lower pasture, I look northwest to Robinson Hill. I live on the hill's eastern saddle. My home faces south-southwest toward the seventy-five-foot Gile Mountain Observation Tower, the rickety platform where I watch hawks migrate through the Connecticut River valley. On a clear day, I see sunlight glinting off the metal roof of my house, seven miles away (as the redtail flies). To reach the tower, I must walk half-a-mile along a woodland trail, climb switchback stairs through an erector-set frame, and then haul myself through a trapdoor. Beside my house, I can see northeast to Mount Washington, barely visible beyond Mount Mooilauke. To the south, Mount Ascutney looms large over the Connecticut River; to the southwest, Stratton, Killington, Pico; to the west, Camel's Hump and Mount Mansfield. And farther west, beyond them all, the blue-purple haze of the Adirondacks.
But I climb the tower for intimate panoramas: wayfaring clouds; monarch butterflies; warblers and vireos and flycatchers foraging in the canopy; hawks riding thermals that bubble up from sun-drenched ledges and macadam. Ah, the hawks—one windless, early September day in 1979, I counted nearly seven hundred, mostly broadwings. In April 1978, a golden eagle passed over Gile Mountain (the only other Vermont golden I’ve seen, December 2006, sailed over Coyote Hollow as I drained our hot tub). A curve in the Connecticut River. A church steeple in Strafford. Across the river: Dartmouth's Baker Library Tower; beyond that, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Launching from the Post Mills Airport, on the northwest flank of Robinson Hill, gliders and hot-air balloons use the same thermals as hawks.
The tower floor is plywood: the sides, thigh-high sheet metal. Many years ago, faded red calligraphy on one side said Grateful Dead but was amended to read Gratefully Dedicated to Earth. The sun-bleached both editions. Someone's added a few bullet holes. This morning, standing in the lower pasture, I admire the tower, a spec on a distant ridge, well above the surrounding hardwoods. My home at my back, the dogs at my side, I yield to the paleolithic impulse to sense my place within the furrowed landscape . . . memories and a rickety tower help.
I found this, which let me see what the Gile Mountain Observation Tower is like--wow! As someone with more than a little acrophobia, I'm in awe of those of you who climb these towers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG7NaCMiOPE
And "furrowed landscape" is a perfect term for all those folds in the earth. I found this,:
https://outdoors.dartmouth.edu/activities/hiking/hikes/gile.html#:~:text=The%20Gile%20Mountain%20Formation%20originated,to%20the%20north%20and%20south.
"The Gile Mountain Formation originated as oceanic ooze that was squeezed up into mountains when Africa collided with North America almost 400 million years ago." 400 MILLION years ago, this mountain formation was "oceanic ooze"--no wonder those furrows look like frozen waves!