I wish you a river

 

We humans are a needy bunch.  When you compare us to our friends of feather or fur, we are high maintenance creatures, always on the prowl for another bauble to weave into our nests or secure our burrows.  And that’s okay.  We are an ebb and flow society, dependent on the persistence of supply and demand.  

In these last many months, I suspect that you, much as myself, may have noticed your demands turning inward, toward your human essence, your soul.  Once you had stacked your shelves to toppling with paper goods, canned foods, and disinfectants, you might have taken the opportunity to contemplate those things in life beyond physical needs and comforts.  Things a little less sanitizing and a little more sanctifying. And understand this.  I’m not accusing anyone of not embracing emotional and spiritual necessities before this pandemic.  I know I did, though I wonder if your balance has shifted as mine has.  From my hands to my heart. Less about what I need to grab and more about what grabs me.

With all the uncertainty of the present and future, perhaps today you are visiting the past more often in search of comfort.  An inner connection.  A touch of healing.

We all require spiritual sustenance.  And I’m not referring to a formal religious experience as much as I am something more basic, yet something certainly as divine.  Something that’s difficult to communicate. But when you do experience it, it heals you, at the times you most need the healing.  

This happened recently.  We decided to drive out into the country, to get out of the house, waylay our sheltering-in routine for a few hours.  It was one of those special early autumn days.  You know the ones, when everything comes together – the sun, the sky, the clouds, the breeze, the spice of earth and air.  One of those days when the tilt of the globe is right near plumb.  A time when you experience familiar places, but now, everything carries a subtle difference.  The routine takes on fresh life.  A sheen and shimmer, the way objects catch and spread the light.  A cemetery of faded stones bearing dear and familiar names.  An old train depot laboring through its last gasps, its fading yellow paint fighting valiantly to stay relevant.  A field of cotton bursting from its bolls, stretching all the way to the silent woods, tiny white clouds on stiff, brown stems, patiently awaiting the picker.  A two-hundred-year-old farmhouse, perched on its simple throne of land, reminiscent of when it was a poor man’s palace of chestnut logs crowned by a wood shake roof.   All these things.

And a river. 

It was the river that got me.

It’s called the Elk, a reluctant gift from the Chickasaw as they retreated farther south into Alabama prior to being herded west.  The river my ancestors stumbled upon in the early 1800s and decided that here was a good place to stop.  To settle.  It was the Elk that started my healing yesterday.  A few precious moments standing on a bridge staring down at that old river.   A river that ran long before I was born and will run long after I’ve moved on.  A river I’ve walked and fished and rested beside, asking difficult questions and sometimes finding difficult answers in the rush of its water against root-heavy banks and implacable sandbars.  

When I was a kid, I trot-lined the Elk with my father and uncles, my job being to sit in the back of the little boat and paddle till my arms fell off.  While Uncle Joe sat up front and “ran” the lines, slinging off old minnows and replacing them with fresh, live ones, and dip netting onto the floor of the boat a mess of twisting and flopping yellow cats and Mississippi blues that had been kind enough to stay hooked until we could get to them.  But what I remember most about those days and nights were the moments when I could rest the oar on my legs in that sacred space between lines, when the river would take over and float us to the next spot, with the entire world framed between those opposing banks.  The sounds of the slow water slapping against the boat, the incessant buzz and hum of katydids and treefrogs, and, late afternoon, the sun, and at midnight, a waning crescent moon, their reflections shimmering in the dingy mirror of water. Just a couple of fishermen submerged in air that struggled between humid and dry.  Between sweaty and sweet.  Between warm and cool.  Nothing but the anxious trill of a pileated woodpecker breaking the spell.  If there was a time when my existence and the whole of creation felt perfectly seamless, it was then.

Many years ago, I wrote a short story called “The Drowned Boy.”  Set on this same river, it was my first published story since my college years, and the process of writing it informed me much more than the many hours I spent in classrooms. It was also the first time I realized how important that long flow of water was to me.  In truth, the river wrote that story.  One wide bend, one foaming rush of shallows at a time. I just transcribed the words it whispered in my head late into the night. And while the point-of-view voice was that of a young boy coming of age because of unthinkable tragedy, the real voice of the story was the river. It was then that I realized how crucial it is to have a connection and how you might not even know you need it until you find it.  Or it finds you.  That a connection to the rest of the universe is sometimes the only thing that works.  To heal you and take you beyond all the chaos and clamor and uncertainty that bullies its way into your world.  

I wish you all a river. 

And you’re welcome to share mine if you like, for there’s plenty of it to go around.   But you have to be willing to accept the haunting with the blessing, the questions with the truth.  The rapids with the calm. And I wish you all fine autumn days like the one I had, whether it’s the autumn of the year or the autumn of your life.  Or both.  I wish for all of you a connection.  A healing. When your life wobbles a little and takes you out of sorts, out of plumb.  When circumstances have you adrift and the way back is clouded.  When you need a river to point you home.

For several weeks now, a bonded pair of mockingbirds has been following the old adage to go forth and multiply.  A bush that sits just on the inside perimeter of the pool fence, right beside the "Beware of Dog" sign, has been the center of their world:  first in an amazingly industrious effort to build the nest, then a slight lag while eggs were laid, and, before this week,  an absolute frenzy of activity to feed a nest of hatchlings.

Now they are frantically flying back and forth between the nest and the closest limbs of nearby trees.  Always within sight of the bush that holds the nest and close enough to be heard as they call out in staccato bursts.  I assume they're trying to coax their babies from the nest, get them to take that first short flight, the one that is necessary to sustain those young birds, in particular, and the family line in general.

I envy them.

Listen, I have no desire to be exposed to the elements of a stormy spring and summer and spend every waking hour attempting to raise young-uns.  I don't want to work even nearly as hard as those two birds in order to individually survive and provide sustenance to others.  I can't imagine, in bird hours, how much time, and what percentage of their overall lifespan, has gone into these last four or five weeks.

I can barely comprehend the amount of the courage, energy, and steadfastness that goes into their efforts.

They say that mockingbirds rank pretty high on the bird intelligence scale.  I don't know who studies these things, but I'm willing to take this information at face value.  They supposedly can distinguish between humans, recognizing the ones who pose a threat and the ones who don't.  Their ability to mimic others birds is astonishing.  The human theories vary on why they do this though I'm certain they know exactly why and are fine with it.

So they're smart, hardworking birds.

But that's not why I envy them.

I envy their faith.  Many will say the driving force behind these creatures is pure instinct rather than faith.  Hey, that's okay because I don't think there is anything wrong in being instinctually faithful. Faith is a good thing however you manage it.   Those who would concede that birds are, well maybe, capable of displaying faith would then insist that it's blind faith.  If faith is indeed "hope of that which is not seen," then all faith has a hint of blindness.

I might argue that these two mockingbirds are operating on truth.  Truth that is steeped in the reality that hard work, tireless energy, and implicit trust of the universe will be rewarded.  And that the universe is equipped like a Cy Young award winning pitcher with every pitch in the book:  curve, slider, fastball...but every pitch is hittable with enough preparation seasoned with inspiration and perspiration.

Then there's love.   Yeah, I know.  They're birds.  Even those people who would allow that dogs, and in a rare case, cats, demonstrate love, probably wouldn't go so far as to ascribe that emotion to birds.  But let me tell you something.  I've had a little time during this pandemic to observe.  To look and listen.  And it's difficult to do much observation without a good deal of thought as well.  And there's no way I could have sat there and watched these two mockingbirds over the last several weeks and not believe something more than instinct was driving them.  In fact, I've seen more evidence of faith, truth, and love in these two tiny creatures than I've seen in many of my fellow humans lately.  And maybe that suggests we should look outside of our own flawed species in these difficult times and to some of the other creatures we share this globe with, great and small.

And here's the thing.  Once those fledglings have been coaxed out of the comfort of their nest and began their own contribution to the cycle of life, those two adult birds will start all over again.  Another family this summer, maybe two.  Working in accord with each other and through storms and sunshine alike.  United on the wings of something that looks a lot like truth, faith, and love.  And thankfully oblivious of pandemics and politics and a nation of humans spending too much time mocking each other across the landscape of social media.

A rose isn't always a rose

It took almost eight weeks, but I finally snapped.

Don't get me wrong, I've been quarantined with maybe one of the most affable humans ever created.  She would make Melanie Hamilton look like a shrew.  And the friends who know us will tell you without hesitation, I would be the one who eventually caved in to the pressure of these difficult days. It being my nature and all.   But I'll tell you right now, I'm not ashamed and I'm not apologizing.  No way.

I'll keep the backstory brief.  My wife and I have been ordering our groceries on-line from Walmart for the duration of our sheltering-in period.  Easy process, pick a day and time, order much more food and other junk than you need or could ever eat in three pandemics, and go pick it up.  You pull into a designated slot in the parking lot and someone wheels out a dolly with all your provisions and loads them into your vehicle.  The only issue you might encounter is that sometimes an item is out of stock or an item is substituted.  It is the latter of these two that led me to come unglued.

My wife was doing Armageddon inventory control last week and announced, with some trepidation, that we were down to 48 rolls of toilet paper.  I had discovered weeks before that she wasn't interested in the proper manners and protocol around toilet paper purchases, such instruction just causing her to stare more intently into the screen of her smartphone.  Likewise, my math and science detailing the half-life of a mega roll of bathroom tissue, with my certainty that we had enough for the two of us to manage until Christmas, had no impact on her and her wishes.  So, like any good husband, I added it to the list, 98% certain that like all the other times, it would be out of stock.

The appointed time came and the deliverer rumbled out with a loaded dolly and announced that the only item out of stock was the asparagus and the only substitution was the toilet paper.  I tried to question the nice lady as to the differences between what we ordered and what we received, but was silenced by a sharp look from my wife.  Not a problem.  The question answered itself when we got home.

Think about this:  you're ready for a new dog in your life and you decide you want a German Shepherd.  A big, beautiful sleek hero of a canine, one that will carry his own weight and bring you years of loyalty and companionship.  You spend weeks waiting for the blessed day to arrive, you are giddy as you drive to the Humane Shelter, and when you get there, instead of this fine, noble German Shepherd, they bring a yipping, squirming little chihuahua to the car.  (Listen, no insult intended for you chihuahua lovers, I'm just trying to create a reasonable analogy here.)  And you spend the entire drive home wondering how in the world you are going to adjust your dream to this reality, and when you get there, you discover the chihuahua has peed all over the back of your SUV and his incessant whining causes your hearing aids to feedback.

Well, picture my dismay when I unload the groceries and I find our "substitution."  First of all, my original order was for twelve rolls of Charmin, the version that's the size of a temporary spare.  The paper that you need a pulley and fulcrum to yank off the roller.  You know the ones I mean, I'm sure you've had sheets separate on you from the weight of that monster roll more times than not.  And, in the new math of the toilet paper industry, those twelve rolls are equivalent to forty-eight "regular" rolls.  So what do I find?  Twelve beautiful, hefty, substantial rolls of my name brand choice?  Nope.  Not nearly.  Instead, scattered through the back of our vehicle are forty-eight pitiful, scrawny, single rolls of a generic bathroom tissue with the consistency of pond scum.  Twelve four-packs of imposters.  I proudly bring my discovery to the attention of my smug wife, who takes one look at it and says, "It's fine.  I'll use it."

Fine?  Really?  You have forty-eight rolls of something just slightly thicker than a hot July breeze and you're okay with it?  "Well," I say.  "I'm not."  And I proceed to tell her right there in the driveway why I wasn't okay with trying to find a spot somewhere in our house for forty-eight rolls of something that has the gall to call itself toilet paper, or bathroom tissue, or whatever sham of a name it was going by.  That it was an insult to all of the legitimate rolls of toilet paper and to the entire woodsy heritage of the toilet paper industry.  How this crap was going back to Walmart so fast its cardboard tube would spin.  Oh, man, let me tell you.  I wore my indignation like a crown! I preened and crowed and puffed up large!

"Well," she said, snatching up a 4-roll package, "I'm keeping this much of it.  I'll use it and you can take the rest back."

I was shocked.  A compromise, huh?  For the ninety-eight cents plus tax cost of one four pack, we could both get some level of satisfaction out of this uncomfortable situation.  And I have to admit that I was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable with myself.  In fact, I wondered if maybe this was an early sign of starting to slip over the edge.  So, tightening my mental hinges, I headed back to Walmart with the imposter paper.  When I got there, I called inside and let them know I had an exchange.  A lady came out and started loading the reprobate tissue into a cart.

"Sorry for the trouble," I mumbled.  "I just didn't think it would work out."

In the rearview mirror, I saw a big smile come on the lady's face, and I watched it until the gate closed her from my view.   She knew, I thought.  She knew!  I wasn't being petty or difficult, after all.  No matter what my wife thought, this nice Walmart lady knew I was right.  Everybody probably returned that awful stuff.  I felt light and strong at the same time. All of my doubts had been cleanly wiped away.  I nodded at those wise eyes that stared back at me in the mirror, put my car in reverse, and, a freshly redeemed man, I drove home.

The Peckerless Chicken

Calm down.  It's not what you think.

Just a recollection of simpler times.

I suppose I was 8 or 9.  My paternal grandmother and grandfather lived in a little house surrounded by tall hedges and sat catty-corner to the church. Across the road, train tracks ran beside the house, and, twice a day, an eastbound train rattled by.  An older gentleman in railroad overalls would toss brown paper bags of candy from the deck of the caboose.

The house was a simple two-story.  Reasonably warm in the winter and tolerable in the summer with the windows open and a fan going.   Pa had about a football field commute to his general store and Mammy held down the fort, cooking, cleaning, and taking an occasional break with a Redbook magazine and a Kool.

There was a stretch of bare ground in the back of the house, bordered by the smoke house, the hen house, and a couple of sheds.  But this grassless yard, it was the chickens' yard.  All day long, they clucked and cackled and chased bugs.  I suspect it was a pretty good life for a chicken, certainly a much better life than what current-day chickens have.  And it seemed that for every bug a chicken wolfed down, you'd receive a disproportionately larger amount of chicken poop from the other end.  Which was the source of the endless admonition upon entering the enclosed back porch from the chicken yard, "Wipe your feet!"

Those of you familiar with having chickens know that they weren't pets.  They were your eggs for breakfast and your go-to entree for Sunday dinner.   And though even today I cannot speak to the lifespan of a chicken, I do know that the flock had to be renewed every so often.  And that renewal consisted of bringing in a new flock of baby chicks - a whole boxful that you could spill out into the yard and watch immediately acclimate to life on their own.  Their cluck was just a peep, their cackle was yet to be developed, but they already had a handle on pecking at the ground for whatever there was to eat and commenced to do so "right out of the box," as they say.

I was visiting on a day that a new batch of baby chicks arrived.  Pa Gray rolled up in his old green Chevy truck, fetched a perforated cardboard box out of the bed, and set in on the ground.  He headed back to his store, leaving Mammy and me to gaze down upon a roiling wave of yellow feathers and a symphony of peeps.

All you had to do was tip the box on its side and the chicks proceeded to do what they were supposed to do.  Peck at the ground for feed, seed, and a stray bug or two.  And all the new arrivals did just that.

Except for one.

You see, there was one little fellow who, to put it simply, didn't have a pecker.  At the end of his face was just a hint of keratin.  Born without a beak.  But not without a brain and that brain still registered hunger and the automatic impulse to peck at the ground to find it.  Unfortunately, in his or her case, with no satisfaction.

The baby chick banged its face against the ground a couple of times and then I swear to this day he looked straight up at me, his little black eyes imploring that I help him.

It liked to have killed me.

I asked my grandmother what we could do to help and she just smiled and shook her head.

"We can't help the little fella," she said.  "He was born that way."

I asked what would happen to him.

She told me that the chick would have to adjust or it wouldn't survive.  How it was impossible to change its circumstances.  And if it couldn't figure out how to handle what life had dealt it, it would have no future.

Guess what?

It adapted.  I watched it over the next several weeks and it managed to tilt its head in a certain way and sort of roll the food into its mouth and down its throat.  Same process at the water pan.  It thrived as well as the rest of the flock, and, except for the obvious physical difference, in a few weeks, it was a full-fledged chicken, doing what full-fledged chickens do.

It could have protested and pouted and fumed and cried and screamed till the chickens came home, and it wouldn't have changed a thing.

You may not believe this story; it's your prerogative.  But I was there and, all these years later, it remains one that stuck with me.  And then there are those of you who have already taken that little trip to the dark side and imagined that for all that chick's ingenuity, all it got was a trip to a hot skillet.  Maybe so, but at least it got that far.

As I think about that story today, I think about how resiliency and adaptability seemed to be second nature to our parents and grandparents.  And I can't help but wonder if any of that "took" with us, and, if it did, are we passing it on to our children and grandchildren?  Are we giving them what they need to not only survive, but to prosper as well, when life throws them a curve ball?   When life fails to equip them with what they need to manage life in an uncertain world.

Today is March 29, 2020.  I doubt there is a single person who doesn't know where I'm going with this.  There has not been a time in the history of 99% of the people pecking away on this globe today when it has been more critical that we adapt.  We have to adapt to the horrific problem at hand as well as to a lifestyle that will most certainly be altered in decades to come.  And I doubt it will be an easy transition, but I also know it will be far from impossible. Very likely the quality of the lives of our future generations depends on how creative, cooperative, and adaptable our current society is.   This isn't an invitation to a pity party.  It's just one tiny slice of a lifetime of memories that scratched itself to the front of my brain today.  Don't ask me why because I couldn't tell you.  And I wish for everyone the power to evolve and adapt not just to survive, but to succeed and prosper well beyond any aspirations you may have had before we entered these trying times.  Like that little fellow in my grandmother's back yard, find a way.  It's really that simple.

And I can assure you there's one thing that certainly will not be on my lunch menu today.

The gift

                                                       

A friend gave me a pencil recently.  To be specific, she gave me Blackwing Palomino #602.  Personally adorned with a winding of washi tape of stunning orange, yellow, and green to keep someone else from mistaking it for their Blackwing Palomino #602.  But it wasn't just a pencil, you need to understand.  It was a gift - spontaneous, thoughtful, without pretense, and with nary a shadow of quid pro quo.  A gesture from the heart.

Geri and I attended a writers conference in Orange Beach late last fall and were happy to reconnect with a young lady we met at the same conference the year before.  Since she probably wouldn't want  the attention, for simplicity's sake, I'll just call her "Amy."  We were sitting at the same table during the conference keynote dinner and, while most people were thumbing away at their smartphones capturing items of note, Amy was recording her thoughts in prehistoric fashion:  pencil on paper.  And what a pencil it was!  Even without the colorful Washi tape, it was a handsome instrument of aromatic cedar wood painted medium grey  and topped with an eraser that looked like it had been run over by a Subaru.

I had barely finished expressing my admiration of that fine writing instrument when she pushed it toward me past delinquent crumbs of yeast rolls and through small pools of water from our condensating water glasses.

"What?" I said.

"It's yours," she answered.

Well, I told her that I couldn't possibly take her pencil, especially since she had gone to the trouble to dress it up with the nice tape and all.  It was obviously special to her.

"I have another," she said with a look of triumph, digging in her bag and extracting a second Blackwing Palomino #602.  (Much shorter and undecorated, I noticed, and I was already gloating over the fact that my new pencil was the obvious superior of the two.)

(I know just about now that some of you are getting ready to speed-read the rest of this blog because a:  you're just really not all that into pencils or b: there's paint drying somewhere that needs your immediate attention...but, if you will, bear with me just another couple of minutes.)

What was just a germ of thought at the time and has since bloomed large and loud:  the simplest kindnesses in life are always, always, going to pack the biggest punch.  And people really aren't all that complex and in need of big, cinematic moments.  In this current environment of personal and social warfare, from the real violence that bangs and stumbles its way out into the streets to the passive-aggressive spit-fights of memes and words in the alleyways of social media, simple gestures of camaraderie and friendship carry a lot of weight.  Enough weight, in fact, to squash so much of this spiteful silliness that we are exposed to day in and day out.  And whether either of us knew it at the moment, what Amy did meant a great deal to me.

In fact, I used that Blackwing Palomino #602 to create the first draft of this blog.  Its graphite lead eased my words on paper like silk on suede while its eraser absolved me of my original sins of syntax.  My words waltzed out of that suave devil.  Having finished, I decided I wouldn't use that pencil again.  One and done.  I would preserve it, save what was left so that it would always have plenty of life left in it, its needle-sharp point ready to strike at moment's notice.  A souvenir, a keepsake.  Maybe put it on my desk to be sucked into the black hole of clutter that resides there.  Then better judgement vanquished that thought and I decided that, doggone it, I will write that pencil right down to its gnarly little stub and rub at that eraser until its metal ferrule mutilates the paper.  That's why it was gifted to me and I would be doing the giver and the pencil an injustice if I approached it differently.

I suspect all gifts are meant to be used right down to the nub, right to the very end.  Gifts of talent, skill, and proficiency passed down from the Supreme Gifter as well as a friend's gently used number two pencil, with a few light bite marks providing an extra dose of character.  Gifts are meant to be used for the good they bring and the joy they create.  Gifts come in all shapes, sizes, and usages, and you never want to look a single one in the mouth.  Gifts aren't meant to be hidden or saved for later.  What would the point be?  If Amy's gift to me works out the way I wish, it will bring at least a brief respite from the written and spoken violence we are often exposed to.  A counterbalance to spite and ugliness.  A shading, if you will, of soft graphite offerings on brand new pages, toward something a little better.  An olive branch bobbing on the flood waters.

Just the right words can do that you know.

The Old Man

I caught the old man looking at me this morning. Caught him out of the corner of my eye. Just in my peripheral. Who was he, you ask.  What does it matter? He was an old man. An old man. He looked like he had just gotten up, clumps of grey hair rebelling against a balding scalp, eyes still swollen from sleep. Tall, but without the stoop I usually notice in some men his age. (Give it a few more years, old guy.) And in those eyes a look of surprise that slowly gave way to one of recognition. Yeah, he knew who I was and I knew him. Hey there, old man, I thought. I know you. We smiled simultaneously - big grins actually - just before I stepped from his view.

I have taken on the duty of telling anyone who will listen (and that group is dwindling) my theory, which I'm certain is shared by some, that our soul finds an age it's comfortable with and commences to squat right there. While the face, the body, all those outwardly exposed things, age at what seems to be exponentially, the soul refuses to budge.

The country megastar Toby Keith talks about when he was sharing a cart with Clint Eastwood at a charity tournament in Pebble Beach when the actor related that filming would begin on The Mule in a couple of days. When Toby asked the actor well into his eighties how he keeps going, Eastwood gave him that trademark glare and told him that he just gets up every morning and goes out. And  "I don't let the old man in."

Perfect advice.

I believe that women do a much better job than men in barring the door against their aging selves. Of course, they do enlist a little help.  She wouldn't like me telling it, but when we travel, my wife needs a separate piece of luggage for her "cosmetics."  For the longest I tried to encourage her to just pack a few essentials in her regular luggage, but she always managed to resist that well-intentioned suggestion.  Now, I just go with the flow and recognize the fact that this extra piece of luggage being included is more essential than...well...than me being included.

But before I ignite a war of sexes, let me get back to my point.  And that it is essential we all keep the old men and women from elbowing their way in.  Oh, we can't do much about them lurking around all the blasted mirrors, or photo-bombing us by replacing their bodies and faces with ours in group photos and selfies.  We can't keep them from breathing heavily every time we overextend ourselves physically or wrenching our knees and shoulders after a long day battling the house or the lawn.

But we can respect all the trouble our souls go through to stay rooted at a much younger age.  My soul chose thirty-five and I'm perfectly happy with that.  An age when I was old enough to know better but young enough to still do stupid things from time to time.  An age when I wasn't tied to blood pressure medication and knee braces.  An age when sunrises glow like heaven afire and sunsets spread across the sky like melting strawberry sundaes.

Listen.  I love you, old man, and I'm more than happy to let you eat over the sink in my kitchen and take naps on my couch.  You can creak around the house and make annoying comments to my wife. We can even watch some college football together on autumn Saturday afternoons.  But I'm not ready for you to come in.  Sorry, you sweet old fellow you, but in that regard, you're just not welcome.  And one more thing, while you're at it, stay away from my mirror!

Eagle Morning

Just after crossing Dickey Bridge at the Elk River this morning, an eagle, close enough to reach out and touch, swooped toward our truck.  Well, maybe not quite that close, but I could see the division of the feathers along his wings and the light glinting off the shiny brownish yellow of his beak.  He was flying west along the riverbank across a field of freshly planted corn.  It was still early enough in the morning that the sun was a melting glob of butter against the blue, cloud-streaked sky and dew lit up the green pastures like diamonds.  

He, and I say “he” but it could have just as easily been a “she,” rowed his way toward a place where the Elk takes a sharp meander, his wide wings slicing huge swaths of air, as methodical as a scythe in orchard grass, commanding land and sky.  As he shrank in the distance, a second eagle burst from a treetop to join my eagle in a short ritual of flight, for moments gliding concentrically above a common area of trees, before disappearing into the thick canopy of leaves. 

It was a dance of sorts, those two eagles, a celebration of return, equal parts joy and relief, the closest thing to a welcoming hug they could manage.  I have no doubt they shared a nest and in that nest were a couple of hungry fledglings, screaming in anticipation of a breakfast of trout or squirrel. It hasn’t been an easy spring for the pair, there on the banks of the Elk.  The heavy rains and strong winds of an unusually grumpy spring presented its challenges and there were many cold and rainy days and nights when their warm bodies were the only buffer between their eaglets’ life and death.  And where they could usually depend on dry ground to land and hunt, the angry brown water of a river out of banks swirled below them.

I’m happy for them that this is a good day.  The chilly May morning has settled into a comfortable warmth and a short reprieve has shouldered its way in between the spring storms that the west side of the country insists on sending our way every week.  Maybe the young eagles will take their first short flight today. Or maybe their stomachs will be so full that they will wait another day or two.  Hey, that’s just part of the freedom of being an eagle. 

 And they can’t know how thankful I am for the sixty seconds those majestic creatures shared with me this morning.  They have no earthly idea how high that little happenstance I witnessed this morning will allow me to soar.  Each and every time I think about it.