Date: 7/23/26 2:27 pm From: Ted Levin <tedlevin1966...> Subject: Re: [VTBIRD] 23 July 2026: Hurricane Hill (1,100 feet), WRJ
Bob,
No VT colloquialism, but I kinda like *log on leash. *It has a nice ring to
it. Meant *dog* all the way. Corrected before the revised edition appeared
on Substack.
Ted
On Thu, Jul 23, 2026 at 3:47 PM anneboby <
<00000038cbe79a41-dmarc-request...> wrote:
> "...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.
>
>
