*The Promise of Sunrise: Finding Solace in a Broken World *was published on
the spring equinox by Green Writer Press. Here's yesterday's post, as it
appeared on Substack, where you can subscribe for free or at a paid rate.
The original post appeared on the Upper Valley birding listserv, was edited
for Vermont birds, and was subsequently published on Substack with an
additional closure.
5:24 a.m. (twenty-nine minutes before sunrise). Thirty-six degrees, wind
Northwest four miles per hour, gusting to eleven. Sky: immaculate, blue and
cloudless. The crescent moon, lonely in the southeast. In anticipation of
the sun, the New Hampshire ridgeline glows a warm orange, not too heavy,
denser than sherbet, duller than an oriole. The sun rises due east over
Moose Mountain, precisely ninety degrees from where I stand, farther north
than in winter, when it rose out of the gravel works in West Lebanon and
tracked directly above Hurricane Hill. Daffodils open, and flowers nod in
subservience to the rising sun. Red maples, fully flowered. Crowns glow, a
warm, subtle brick-red, not the October knockout blow when the hillsides
achieved chromatic density.
*Annals of a Secretive Neighbor:* Silent and hidden by day, I haven't seen
either barred owl since I returned home from Colorado two weeks ago.
Yesterday, dueting began at dusk in the evergreens downhill from my
deck—hoots and caterwauls, back and forth. After dark, the owls shifted
location. Once asleep, whenever I opened my eyes, pronouncements poured
through the open windows; so close I’d sit up and contemplate tracking them
down. Serenades end by civil twilight, leaving me lacing my sneakers,
bereft in the mudroom.
5:17 a.m. Juncos and robins take over the airwaves from owls.
5:37 a.m. Chickadees and titmice join in. Six minutes later, phoebe's
rasping vocals roll out of the shed. Then, a short flight for a gray moth.
*Department of Percussionists: *5:52 a.m. Sapsucker, disjointed taps, and
pileated drumroll, one loud burst, then none, accenting the morning. Hairy
woodpecker, rapid-fire; downy, not so much. Red-bellied woodpecker and
flicker, content to scream. Ruffed grouse, somewhere in the dim woods,
wings worrying dawn.
Two tongue-tied crows, reticent as rutabagas, pass southeast, low overhead.
Well above the forest crown, a solitary raven, slow-motion wingbeats make
up for hushed crows; a burst of well-spaced gargling notes, no two quite
the same, heads west, black feathers a gorgeous sheen.
Hermit thrush and winter wren croon ... solid-gold melodies—the sweetness
of sunrise. I can't get enough of either one.
*And the Background Vocalists:* red- and white-breasted nuthatch;
white-throated, song, chipping, and a lone tree sparrow on its way home to
the Canadian hinterlands (I hope his border-crossing papers are in order);
goldfinch; Carolina wren, screaming; red-winged blackbird; voluble blue
jays, move from tree to tree in pairs, morning's spokesbirds; ruby-crowned
and golden-crowned kinglets; cedar waxwing, pine warbler.
*Pond Doings*: Spring peepers are in charge, waiting in silence for the day
to warm. Newts inhale wood frog eggs, a breakfast of raw omelets.
Fortunately, wood frogs lay eggs by the thousands—every pond and vernal
pool a congestion of anticipation.
*Department of Border Security: *Who's in charge when the Neotropical
migrants swarm our southern border? Birds and butterflies and dragonflies,
international citizens of the hemisphere. Wings on fire, rushing home to
breed. They cross the *Gulf of Mexico* and the Rio Grande by the billions,
storming our perimeters and exploiting our resources. Then, in the dark of
night, they invade Canada on a warm southern breeze, storming the Bastille,
lampooning current conventional edicts. I.C.E. be damned.
*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, OnEarth, National Geographic Traveler, National Geographic Books,
Yankee, 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 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.*
On Wed, Apr 23, 2025 at 4:43 PM Sandy Turner <tmsprgrn...> wrote:
> Just VT Birds. Is your other book of Covid year published yet? Sandy
>
> On Mon, Apr 21, 2025 at 11:00 AM Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> wrote:
>
>> Sandy, do you get my Substack posts? The VT Birds is a rough draft of
>> what I will eventually publish.
>>
>
