Date: 7/23/26 12:47 pm From: anneboby <00000038cbe79a41-dmarc-request...> Subject: Re: [VTBIRD] 23 July 2026: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
"...log on a leash." Really. First impression: it was an intriguing typo. Further examination of the keyboard showed the letters "d" for dog and "l" for log are not juxtaposed, rather quite far apart ruling out the likelihood of a conventional typo. Is it a woodsy Vermont metaphor?
Bob Yunick
On a leash in the Adirondacks
On Thursday, July 23, 2026 at 10:23:49 AM EDT, Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> wrote:
4:47 a.m. (forty-five minutes before sunrise). Fifty-one degrees, with a
west wind at two miles per hour, gusting to five—calm compared with last
evening, when the wind snapped branches and heart-rotted trees. Robins
singing on the pergola at 4:37 a.m.
Clear overhead. Lightly striated in the east and north. A small cloud
clings to the horizon in the valley between Smarts Mountain and Mount Cube.
Another, a cottony puff, drifts above the mouth of the White River.
Then, as the sun rises above Moose Mountain, the east gleams like polished
gunmetal. Light at first, then deepening to a metallic gray-purple—an
evanescent wash that vanishes in moments.
Sprays of goldenrod, the first hint that summer is not eternal, color the
edge of the road and the uncut meadow with yellow.
5:04 a.m. red-eyed vireos join robins, singing nonstop in the maples, the
oaks, the hemlocks.
5:08 a.m. front-lawn chipping sparrows join in and a hermit thrush, hidden
in the hemlock shadows.
5:10 a.m. lone crow across an empty sky, calling
5:12 a.m. goldfinch—many, many—back and forth above the meadow. Song
sparrow in the meadow. Both singing, full-throated.
Ten minutes later, an indigo bunting on an electric line, so intensely blue
I have to stop and stare.
5:26 a.m., just as the sun crests Moose Mountain, a pheobe decides to sing.
Joined by a wood thrush and an eastern towhee. Then, within moments, a blue
jay, first of many, and a titmouse, also first of many.
Red-eyed vireo singing on one side of the road, blue-headed vireo on the
other. Stereophonic music (like my college apartment) except one speaker
broke ... the red-eyed is louder and faster, a ceaseless babble—a terminal
outpouring. Blue-headed, more dignified, pauses, considers. Leaves me
wanting more, not less.
Total: twenty-nine species. Scarlet tanager, tree-top level, over the road;
common yellowthroat; swamp sparrow; house sparrow; house finch.
*At home:* two rose-breasted grosbeak families—males, females, and grown
chicks, two each. A summer highlight. The comings and goings of
hummingbirds at all three feeders and the vine honeysuckle that climbs the
pergola, bearing dozens of clusters of red, trumpet-shaped flowers.
The juncos fledged four chicks from the potted plant hanging from the
pergola, which, for several weeks, made watering a careful dance.
*Yesterday's pre-dawn encounter: *I see an adolescent bear standing in the
road, like a Newfoundland—dark, shaggy, and immense. We stare at each other
in the gray light. I keep walking. The bear keeps standing, staring. Tiny
eyes in a big head, owl in reverse. Dim light. A pregnant moment. Then the
bear turns and steps into the woods, walking back and forth, flat-footed
and noisy, before disappearing into the shadows. I hear it, but can no
longer see it. I stand for long moments, peering into the dark.
I think of my bird feeders filled to the brim, my raspberry vines bent with
fruit, my moldering compost. Should I continue to walk or go home? Defend
my deck with a maniacal cry and bluff charge like a log on a leash? The
morning slowly uncurls. Farther up the road, the bear crosses, sauntering
down the bank and into a meadow, through daisies and goldenrod, in no
particular hurry. Then it stops and looks back at me, like a driver
checking the mirror, though far more flexible. We consider each other again.
Bear heads downhill. I head home to breakfast on the deck. In the company
of squirrels.
