The Promise of Sunrise

25 April 2025: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), White River Junction, Vermont

5:14 a.m. (thirty-six minutes before sunrise). Robins already rule the airways. Forty-six degrees, wind South-southeast two miles per hour, gusting to three (not that I notice).

A dreamy skyscape, sparingly colored across the east. Hints of rose, gridlocked elsewhere, rumpled blue-gray congestion. Then, eastern clouds fracture and colorize—at first, a warm bloom of pastel peach and pink, condensing into lines of neon orange. One thin, longitudinal cloud, yellowish and arced like a foreshortened rainbow, condenses in the southeast and then vanishes. The sun peeks above the New Hampshire skyline at 5:58 a.m., momentarily tangerine.

Then, a rich and spicy bouillabaisse of sunlight seeps across Vermont, igniting the sparse flowers of red maple, bright spots along the meadow's edge, a dusting of color. Tree-trunk lichens glow. By 6:04 a.m., islands of immaculately white clouds scud across the west. Hemlocks and pines are vibrant. Coltsfoot, everywhere and goldfinch bright.

Several aspen catkins float straight down like fuzzy, dehydrated caterpillars.

Sugar maple buds are ready to open. Ash buds buttoned up and birch catkins, tubular and tight.

The Urgency of Spring:

5:29 a.m.: phoebes join the robin chorus.

5:30 a.m.: barred owl signs off, and chickadees sign in.

5:33 a.m.: white-throated sparrow tentatively sings a clipped version of Ol' Sam Peabody, more like Ol' Sam

5:37 a.m.: winter wren, tufted titmouse, and dark-eyed junco take their seats in the Daybreak Orchestra.

5:38 a.m.: yellow-bellied sapsucker, a stuttering Woodland Morse Code, more a tinkle than a drum. Pileated assaults a tree, then laughs.

5:40 a.m.: red-breasted nuthatch joins in.

5:43 a.m.: Joining the dawn chorus: chipping and song sparrows, pine siskins, and white-breasted nuthatches.

5:57 a.m.: blue jays and crows mouth off ... a Corvid discord.

6:04 a.m.: red-bellied woodpecker calls (reminds me of sunrise in the Florida Everglades). A downy woodpecker rushes its drum beats as if late for an appointment.

6:09 a.m.: yellow-bellied sapsucker and a hairy woodpecker vie for the same resonant limb, a barkless, vertical maple branch. Hairy pursues the sapsucker around the limb, yelling. Vanquished, the sapsucker retreats into the woods, tail feathers between its legs.

6:14 a.m.: northern house wren, tiny motor-mouthed songbird. The name has changed ... but the voice remains the same.

6:22 a.m.: northern flicker laughs, then drums, a silhouette against the sky. Laughing louder than rapping.

Post-sunrise cameos: pine warbler; hermit thrush; purple and house finches; ruby-crowned and golden-crowned kinglets; cedar waxwing; swamp sparrow; brown-headed cowbird; myrtle warblers (FOY); brown creeper, whispering in the pines.

Three downy woodpeckers in red maple, two males and a female, a courting pair, and a pest. The second male interrupts nuptials ... doesn't take no for an answer. The primary male chases the interloper: Woodpecker ringoleveo, two teams of one. The female waits for the victor, sun on her back.

Department of Two-way Traffic: three crows and a raven cross the sky in opposite directions. Northbound crows low. Southbound raven high, an associate of the clouds. Surprise, surprise, both species have something to say.

Annals of a Legal Transaction: Earlier this morning, I signed off on my last Will, created a Lady Bird Deed to ensure a seamless transfer of my home to my boys, the mortgage rate frozen, and established a medical power of attorney, as well as an executor for my estate.

Choosing who to entrust with each task takes some thought.

Who would likely pull the plug first? Who would likely procrastinate? Who excels in detail-oriented tasks and financial management? Who has the patience (and time) to deal with ten thousand neatly labeled Kodak transparencies?

My lawyer advised me to store the original copy of the Will in a secure location or to have the Windsor County Court store it indefinitely for $50.

It's a no-brainer. Let the court store them. Yesterday, I searched the house for the sunglasses that were perched on my head.

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 14 March 2020, the day after I returned home from Costa Rica, at the onset of the pandemic lockdown, I started writing a daily journal—part natural history, part memoir, and part commentary—which appeared here on Substack. Since the 25 August 2021 post, I edited the 526 entries (deleting, combining, modifying) into a new book, The Promise of Sunrise: Finding Solace in a Broken World, which Green Writers Press published on the vernal equinox (20 March 2025).

Jennette Fournier's illustrations, many of which are originals (including an otter, a bobcat, chickadees, and a black bear), a playful Winnie-the-Pooh-esque map, and a commissioned watercolor cover grace the book.

From a Seven Days review.

The Promise of Sunrise: Finding Solace in a Broken World

Ted Levin, Green Writers Press, 400 pages. $21.95.

A pissed-off woodpecker flies in and screams...

When COVID-19 crashed into his life in 2020, naturalist Ted Levin began taking a walk each day at sunrise through the woods and wetlands around his home in Thetford. His walks begat a daily blog and now a lyrical book that brings to life the world of efts and otters, warblers and wrens, chickadees and coyotes. Engaging natural history lessons — loon semen and mammoth bones make an appearance — weave through the daily entries, and slowly the reader also learns the story of the author's life.

Levin's writing can be extraordinarily vivid: Coyotes "hurl their voices at the crescent moon"; a bobcat has a face "like a soiled, fraying softball"; chickadees are "four maestros working on a score." Writing such as this demands to be read as one reads poetry, in small sips, to be fully savored.

—Candace Page.