5:09 a.m. 50 degrees, wind N 0 mph. Sky: a light wash of pink in the south that congeals on several long, wispy clouds, their edges trimmed with chromatic brilliance; blue everywhere else. Across the wetlands: light descends the softwoods, a curtain lifting in reverse. I look for red-shouldered hawks; see none. A sparse, low-hanging mist across the wetlands, a thin exhalation. . . breath on a cool morning. Mist rolls over the pond, also thin, going nowhere. Above the north side of Robinson Hill, the Lake Fairlee side, a loon yodels; a haunting call that makes the entire valley seem a notch wilder. A full-body experience . . . I feel it in my bones.
A parula warbler sings in the pines; a pair of agitated woodpeckers chase each, one begging; the other seemingly annoyed. It's breakfast time. (I've been in that situation, too.) In the alders, a pair of caterpillars clamped in his bill, yellowthroat speaks with a full mouth, pic, pic, pic. Plucks a third off an alder leaf; reminds me of an Atlantic puffin with a bill full of capelin.
Activity on the rim of the pond. Diggings. A tail drag in the sand. Did the snapping turtle finally lay eggs? Then, a splash followed by a bubble wake. Mid-pond, the neat oval body of a painted turtle transmogrifies into the neat oval head of a river otter. Nostrils flare. Tail sculls. Black beady eyes fixed on me. Dogs, as excited as I am, snort; noses comb the shoreline. Otter ears tiny. Face blunt. Fur dense. A penchant for play. Back and forth, always hanging mid-pond. Dives. Rises. Dives, again. The otter, on a valley to valley quest, en route through Coyote Hollow. There’s not too much here to eat. Schools of minnows? Shoals of bullfrog tadpoles? A frog? A turtle? A feast for me, if not for the otter. An unexpected encounter, an enchanting moment full of grace.
A flicker drums on a metal fence post. A sapsucker issues a message, woodpecker Morse Code. Then, birds recede into the background, begin to vanish; eclipsed by the otter, only the second I've seen in the pond in twenty-three years. A fat tadpole gulps air. Otter dives. Rises, crown and arched tail break the surface . . . an antediluvian throwback. A couple of gin-and-tonics and, like a Penn and Teller trick, I could turn an otter into an ichthyosaur. Otter vanishes into the dark water.
Many years ago, I was given a copy of the 1977 Animal Control Agent's Report for Hanover, New Hampshire. Listed last, below nine hundred sixty-one complaints—including one gerbil bite and two runaway jackasses—was a note that read, Investigated a report of an otter chasing a mailman. An unglued mail carrier had taken refuge in someone's home after being chased down the street by an otter. The Hanover post office offered no comment. E. B. White did, though. When my friend Sandra sent the report to The New Yorker, White responded in print, Maybe that's what the Postal Service needs.
How can an animal three-feet long and more than twenty pounds hide in a small pond with a mostly mowed shoreline? Hoping for another viewing, I linger. No luck. The dogs take home another in a catalog of unusual odors. I take home good fortune. An otherworldly gift on a late June morning and all I did to receive it was get out of bed early and walk down the road.