It's 4:00 am, two
days shy of the summer solstice. The first glimmer of daylight appeared in the east as early as 3:00 am, and the night
was barely five hours long. The Beautiful Blue Danube floods from my radio alarm. I hit the snooze button. Five minutes
later, Copland gushes forth. Even the farmers are still in bed.
I am not a morning person. I need a flash flood, a fanfare, to be up before dawn this time of year. Rising at
such a desolate hour, even before the robin, the chickadee, the veery, does not come naturally to me. It is
premeditated.
Sipping coffee, I gaze out my kitchen
window at the blushing sky above the eastern horizon. A single cloud, sheer as a ghost, veils Jay Peak as warm, moist
air pushes up and over the northern spine of the Green Mountains and freezes into an icy brushstroke above the
purple-gray summit. Otherwise the sky is clear. The thermometer tacked up outside the window reads 39o F. My wind speed
indicator - a cobweb stretched between the bottom of the thermometer and the window sill - is motionless. Good light, a
heavy dew, no wind. The meadow beckons.
I snuggle into my favorite hooded sweatshirt, pull a pair of rain pants up over my jeans, gulp down the dregs
of my coffee and slip my camera pack onto my back. Then I swing the tripod over my right shoulder and, passing through
the mudroom, step into my Wellingtons before walking out the back door. I cross the lawn, duck under the apple tree, and
wade into the meadow. Dew varnishes my boots and timothy blossoms gild the shiny black rubber with yellow pollen as I
ply through the waist-high grass. The light is still faint; to take a photo I would have to set the camera's aperture at
f/16 and expose the film for 8 seconds.
Prosaic and unassuming, a meadow doesn't flaunt its virtues like, say, a Lake Champlain sunset or The
Northern Forest in autumn. Indeed, as a nature photojournalist, I'm all too familiar with the bias of editors - and of
course, of nature photographers who's livelihood depends on what editors want - toward more charismatic Nature, -
mountains, jungles, and animals with backbones. Admittedly, it's easy to appreciate the grandeur of snowcapped peaks and
the allure of imposing wildlife such as moose and black bear. But a meadow, like peat bogs, vernal pools, and good wine,
reveals its secrets only to those who've learned to appreciate life's magnificent subtleties. Then, a stroll in a
Vermont meadow is as exciting as an African safari.
I check the light - 2 seconds at F11. Down in the grass, near the edge of the beaver pond, an unusual shimmer
catches my eye. Carefully homing in on what appears at first to be a tiny scrap of shiny litter, I find myself looking
at a torpid mayfly clinging to a buttercup bud. Opulent with dew and reflecting the golden, early morning light, its
milky wings contrast noticeably with the verdant meadow. It's a subimago; it has one more metamorphosis to undergo
before becoming a sexually mature, clear-winged adult. Then, it'll have a day or two to find a mate before it dies.
Ectothermic - we use to say cold-blooded - insects are immobilized by the chill of a Vermont night, even in
summer. In the morning, you can find them festooning the meadow grasses and wildflowers like Christmas tree ornaments or
like ripe apples ready to be picked. I prefer to pick them with my camera - F8 at 1/2 second. Perfect.
And so, from the first appearance of the groundhogs and the return of the bobolinks to the peak of its summer
blossoming in late August and the emergence of the monarchs, when the goldfinches shred the thistleheads and dragonflies
chase each other fiercely over lush fields of Joe-pye-weed, goldenrod, milkweed, and asters on frayed, worn-out wings,
the meadow is a dynamic, living tapestry whose patterns and characters change throughout the growing season. I am never
disappointed when I venture into the meadow. Never.
Yet meadows, like mornings and mayflies, are ephemeral. However they are created, either by farming, fire,
wind or ice, they inevitably, inexorably revert to forest. Once left alone, a meadow immediately begins to show its age.
After only a couple of years, grasses yield to weedy species such as fireweed, horseweed, and, bane to hay-fever
sufferers, ragweed. At around ten years of age, the old field is overgrown with shrubs including sumac and shadbush, and
perhaps a few young aspens. By sixty years, it begins to resemble a woodlot.
I peer through the viewfinder again and admire the mayfly. Its diaphanous wings ignite as the sunrise
reflects, inverted, in every shrinking drop of dew. The golden light is gone. Colors are bleached. The mayfly begins to
quiver.
I roll over on my back in the luxuriant grass and watch the steam rise off the pond. A few moments later, I
see the mayfly flutter across the timothy, brome, and fescue. Wishing it luck, I shut my eyes and, succumbing to the
warm sunshine that covers me like quilt, I let the meadow grow up around me for a while.
