Date: 3/15/26 7:00 am From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: [VTBIRD] 15 March 2026: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
6:42 a.m. (nineteen minutes before sunrise). Eighteen degrees, wind
northwest three miles per hour, gusting to eleven. Fresh dusting of snow,
ideal for following the perambulations of gray squirrels, which cross the
road en route to greener pastures, mostly sunflower feeders. Larger, wider
hind footprints in front. Small, closer together front feet behind. Prints
evenly spaced; not likely to be mistaken for the volatile striding of a
weasel or mink.
A pastel sunrise: lavender, rose, hints of orange and yellow. In the east,
only there, clouds cradle the color, low, wrapping the summits of Smarts
Mountain and Mount Cube, drawing a balaclava around distant Mount
Moosilaukee. A message in invisible ink. As I watch, the hues drain out
over Hurricane Hill. The lower sky gathers itself, darkens—bruised
blue-gray. The sun slips into place.
The stream, orchestrated. Open water, running free: brass section—loud,
louder, loudest, a bright metallic shout, ending in a steep, descending
gurgle. Farther in, under the hemlocks, the same stream disappears, roofed
with ice and snow. Only a few rounded openings breathe, letting go a
softer, muffled music—the woodwinds.
6:48 a.m. Nine crows shouldering into the northwest wind, black arrows,
voices torn loose and trailing behind.
6:50 a.m. Out of the deep hemlock shade, a junco trills; another answers
from farther in, a thin deep shadows between them.
7:19 a.m. Nineteen Canada geese in a quivering chevron, heading north.
Positions constantly trade and tumble. Honks fall in ragged sheets,
mingling with the restless rise of meltwater.
Between crows and geese the morning fills: black-capped chickadees, tufted
titmice, both nuthatches, pine siskins. American goldfinches—one hundred,
maybe more—sift the air. White-throated sparrows call, not yet willing to
sing. A single song sparrow, testing the idea. Mourning doves. Cedar
waxwings, without their Bohemian shadows. A lone turkey vulture rocks
northward. Robins and eastern bluebirds loosen songs from the maples. A
purple finch spills one from the lilacs. From the far side of the gloom, a
barred owl calls.
*Annals of Intelligence: *My dog is running out of time. I treat him like a
prince, or maybe like an overfed, out-of-shape German shepherd whose back
half has forgotten how to live. Degenerative myelopathy, a cousin to
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Lou Gehrig’s disease in a dog suit.
Every three or four winter days, I hand him a marrow bone, a small feast
for a big mouth. He works the meat and fat from the outside, bores into the
first inch of marrow at each end, then loses interest. When he is done, I
send the clean white cylinder over the lilacs, out into the snow-buried
meadow, small bones flying into some later afternoon.
Yesterday, two crows stitched the meadow, black against all that white and
brown. Two more harried them, loud, insistent, which was why I looked up
from whatever computer thing I was doing. I expected an owl and instead
found a different knowing. Crows can tweeze marrow from old marrow bones.
That they read those scattered cylinders as sudden wealth startled me. Not
a carcass, not a ribcage or skull, just these four-inch ghosts of bones,
flung wide, some as white as the snow that held them, waiting for black
beaks and bright, improbable minds.
