A raccoon wakes up, Piermont Mountain — by Bob Walker
Welcome to “Dear Daybreak”, a weekly Daybreak column. It features short vignettes about life in the Upper Valley: an encounter, a wry exchange, a poem or anecdote or reflection… Anything that happened in this region or relates to it and that might strike us all as interesting or funny or poignant.
Want to submit your own Dear Daybreak item? Just go here!
Dear Daybreak:
The pair of Bald Eagles are on live video most of the time now. They fly to their nest with sticks in their talons, then arrange them meticulously around the edges. It’s difficult to stop watching. I can’t wait to see what happens next.
Last February, from my own perch on the Forest Canopy Walk Tree House, 403 yards away, I watched the eagles build this nest in a white pine. Now, one year later, I’m seeing them live on my computer screen, as if they are right next to me. I see them allopreening, dining on a porcupine, even mating. It’s humbling to have these close angles on their private moments at the nest, 100 feet above the Ottauquechee River. I find myself assigning them personalities, complimenting their mutual affection, comparing their nest-building to Missy’s and my house-keeping. But I work at VINS with a bunch of scientists and researchers; they remind me that these creatures are eagles, not people. They were living full, wild lives long before they flew into ours.
After we successfully mounted the cameras this winter, the VINS leadership team discussed whether it was even right to assign the eagles names. In the end, we decided to call them Dewey and Windsor, for the pond where they hunt and the county where they live. These are place-based names, just as we assign to the Ambassador birds at the Nature Center, the ones that live here on exhibit with injuries that render them non-releasable. Not to name the eagles would have ceded this task to the public on social media. We didn’t want these eagles to be called Butterfluff and Zeus, or whatever.
If all goes well, Windsor and Dewey will continue to build up the structure of the nest this month. By April, Windsor could be sitting on eggs as she was last year—one, two, or three of them. In early May, we could see an eaglet (or more), which would rely on its parents for food, there at the nest, until fledging in early August. This is what we witnessed last year—albeit from a great distance.
But I don’t know what’s going to happen. The nest could blow out of the pine in a storm, or lightning could fry the cameras. Windsor could lay eggs, only to have them picked off by ravens a few days later, as recently happened on camera at the Friends of Big Bear Valley in California.
I try to be optimistic. Witnessing an eaglet’s first flight from the nest will be worth celebrating. Bald Eagles were in danger of going extinct when I was born (1971), and now they are back. Given that my life has spanned a cataclysmic decline in many bird species, the Bald Eagle recovery inspires hope. I need this hope in the work I do, in the life I lead. I invite my neighbors in the Upper Valley to come along. We have the rare privilege of watching Bald Eagles make their home high above the Ottauquechee River. You can do that here.
— Alden Smith, Norwich
Dear Daybreak:
Winter Milkweed
I make small confessions in the snow,
soft crunches stitched
together with the river sounds
slow, silver syllables
thin burbling hush
The trees, all ribs and ink,
lean over the water, thoughtful
bare arms towards the sky
I lean too
cupped palm around cup
A cracked milkweed pod
its cold cargo
the ghost of summer holding winter
A thousand watery wishes,
mine amongst them
to dance by the river come summer
— Samantha Milnes, Lebanon (inspired by a walk and photo along the Ompompanoosuc River recently).
Dear Daybreak:
A Tribute to a Tinkerer
I "retired" from journalism at an early age—my late 20s. I loved being a writer, but a reporter? Not so much. (Too introverted.) While I moved on to other things, I’ve remained a devoted fan of the craft to this day.
I think my favorite news story of all time is the New York Times’ coverage of the execution of Timothy McVeigh in 2001 (1). I still have my original copy of the article, which I cut out of the newspaper at the time. Now, I know what you’re thinking: It’s certainly not the most pleasant topic. Why would anyone love it so much?
The reason is that it’s an amazing work of longform journalism, written on deadline, with a humdinger of a final line. That single sentence spoke volumes about the subject of the piece as well as the enormous talent of the reporter:
"For his last meal, Mr. McVeigh ate two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream."
It’s a classic example of "show, don't tell" journalism the writer was famous for.
Never did I imagine that many years later I would be a grad student at Dartmouth and one of my professors would be the same man who wrote the article—Chris Wren. Chris’ classes weren’t the typical lecture format. They were more like sitting in a room with a legend and soaking up wisdom while listening to his stories. After I graduated he became my friend, which I think is a fairly universal experience for anyone who knew him.
Chris had a folksy way about him, a sharp wit, and an almost superhuman humility I’ve never seen before or since. He called all of his fellow creative writing professors at Dartmouth "the real writers" while he just "tinkered a little."
When I read the beautiful piece linked to in Daybreak about his passing, and subsequently sat down to write this, it struck me that people all over the world—not just in the Upper Valley, but all across the globe—had Chris Wren stories. The man lived five lives.
We live in an era of acrimony and arrogance, but Chris offered an alternative: a sharp wit paired with a genuine and authentic kindness. The loudest voices in the world today come from wannabe legends. Chris was a legend who refused to act like one—a master of the craft who never stopped tinkering with the hearts of the people he knew.
1. Christopher S. Wren, “McVeigh Is Executed for Oklahoma City Bombing,” The New York Times, June 11, 2001.
— Ken Davis, White River Junction
