February 8, 2011

This morning the clouds turned from a dusty rose, to scallops of glory, to a sky full of pale salmon that brightened to such paleness to approach white. The sky is full of wind today, and leaves fly now and again. A leaf dances in wild gyrations on the deck, and the fluffy black and white cat crouches inside, stares at that leaf, and occasionally jumps to catch it but finds the door in the way. Isn't that how it goes.

Because the day's high temperature happened this morning, and the forecasters told me the temperatures would drop steadily, as they have, I brought wood from the stockpile to the deck right after the guys left for work. By then the sky had turned to a steel lid, clamped down tight, and the wind continued to blow. I experienced with my whole being that sense of lowering sky.

I walked by Deer Creek, and the sky began to brighten again, blue patches appearing to the west, clouds responsive to the wind. Today there was an eagle out and soaring, a juvenile bald eagle, still in it's dark feather coat. But fierce. I would not want to be a mouse in its sights.

The valley is often host to bald eagles. There is a flock of them that nests by the Conowingo dam on the Susquehanna, and it's not so far as birds fly from there to here. About a year ago, one a late winter Sunday morning, I walked west along Deer Creek, and flying over the road toward me came a juvenile bald eagle. I watch them in awe, always, they're huge, and so perfect in their movement. It approached me on a glide, looking me over as openly as I looked at it, put out it's taloned feet, gripped a branch on a tree perhaps twenty feet from me, folded its wings and studied me. I stopped, lifted my chin high and tilted my head far back to continue to watch. That bird stared at me with such intensity I couldn't help but think of Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds. That huge creature sat and stared past its proud beak and down, its gaze clear, unwavering, unblinking. Piercing. In spite of our size differential I felt a little shiver of dread. After what was perhaps fifteen or twenty seconds— a long time— it raised it's shoulders, brought its elbows out from its body, brought its wing tips forward and with an easy, rowing motion lifted from the branch where it had settled, casually releasing its grip and rising away. I knew I had been examined, evaluated as prey, and discarded. Spared.

How often in our lives are we, knowing or unknowing, the ones evaluated as prey?

And if that bird spared my life, what bird-debt do I now carry?