It was one of those truly sublime moments. If one does not record it, it will be lost forever like a single molecule of oxygen in an expansive bright sky. Some say that miracles do not happen. I say they are directly in our path. One just needs to see.
It was a Wednesday, February 19, 2003. I was walking up the driveway from the shed. I had just received a load of gravel to pave the road to the shed and the pad we had just made. The sky was huge and blue this day, the air cool. Perfect flying weather now that I think of it. It was too early for spring, but she was beginning to play.
I remember, as I walked, thinking how lucky I was. The air was all around me; the sky tented over me, a bursting dome of shear blue energy. I was lucky to be here on this day, I thought. Such beauty and only me to witness this moment. I was in one of my moods where I am almost giddy with appreciation. I was the only person on the earth today to see this moment, at this place, at this time. One can imagine what it is like to experience something nobody else sees. One must understand; I often see the day as a miracle. I smell it too. Although my olfactory chromatograph was not working in the forefront today. No, this was a day of sight and sound. And so, I considered myself lucky on this day. It was just one of those rare moments, one of those great days.
In retrospect, maybe luck is less a player than I give it credit. Maybe the tune of ones heart, mind, and soul resonate on the day, a foolish piper playing his instrument and hearing the echoes off a canyon wall. They say everything is connected, all matter, the little stuff that makes up everything, bouncing around with each other, everything playing off this affect and that. In this way, I make the tune that is played back to me by a master who knows what the music really means. Then again I might be too insignificant for the day to care about me. When you think about it, you really do not need to know.
So, my child like awe for the day was burning away as plodded up the driveway headed for the house. As I neared the garage, I heard the sounds of hawks shrieking nearby. Nothing unusual with that. Our cat ran from one these raptors the other day as he lay waiting for a gopher to emerge from a hole. Two shrieks from the predator and the cat gave up his patient stalk that he had committed himself to for the past thirty minutes. I had to chuckle at our black and white feline as he trotted off in a sulk toward the back yard. No, the sight and sound of the hawks patrolling our valley were not unusual. This year I noticed them having trouble with crows though. Nearly everyday I would see them in aerial combat. Usually, two or three crows would team up and attempt to down the hawk in a dogfight that would make a Top Gun flight instructor loose his lunch. They would grapple with the hawk in mid-flight. The hawk would sometimes fly inverted to bring his talons to bear on the dark aggressors. The entire engagement might last fifteen to thirty seconds, a valorous brown-red defender rolling and pitching against an onslaught of black on black. The hawk never seemed to get the better of the crows, but the proud raptor never gave up or lost ground, or in this case air space.
In the years past, the hawks nested in the tallest oaks just below my house. I would see them landing and taking off from their nests, flying sorties with beautiful splendor. This year they must have moved to different tree nearby. I never saw them do battle as this year however. Actually, there have been more crows this year than in years past. Perhaps the crows are recent interlopers in my front yard. Or, should I say the hawk’s front yard.
The shrieks did not register with me other than the usual background noise, part of a perfect compliment to the sky and the air this day. So, I continued my passage toward the garage allowing the music to resonate within my mind.
At first I thought a breeze had begun, but it felt more compressed, a pressure bubble of wind building, a little strange. Faster than my brain could process the incoming data flow, the pressure increased and the breeze became a gust. Before I could catalogue this strange meteorological event in my neural pathways and classify it, my ears were filled with a windstorm; I felt a sickness well up inside, a feeling of dread. The hairs on the back of my neck came to attention, as if that mattered. The gale reached a pitch that was matched by an ever so slight push of air on my head and face. I have often heard that sensory conflict causes motion sickness. What the eye sees does not match what the gyro in the ear is measuring. The conflict between these offsetting sets of data makes one want to heave ho. Of course, I had no time to think of this in the middle of the hurricane sound accompanied by a puff of air on a clear still day.
By the time my head swiveled toward this furious harmony, the storm had abruptly shifted to silence. My eyes locked in on the tempest, too late to have done a thing. The large hawk was on my left side now, climbing out, about six feet above my head and nearly as far away, accelerating at such a speed that it did not set my neck hairs at ease. It was only now that my mind was catching up with the whole thing. Quickly my brain raced to give me a status report; lightening fast calculations and estimations back tracked the hawk’s flight path, placing the hawk within inches of my scalp at a time when my neck hairs were just beginning their respectful salute. So much for sensory conflict. What about precognition? Now I know what a mouse must experience just before going to meet the big cheese.
The hawk had a wing span of about three feet. Actually, I arrived at this figure several days later when I had a chance to think more clearly. At the time I would have said it was a prehistoric bird with a twenty foot wing span. The raptor continued its rapid climb out, never once giving push to the air with its wings. It rose with such an honest audacity that I could find no fault in it. Once again my brain tried to reconcile the event. I tried to estimate the speed the predator must have attained in its dive to climb out so fast without needing additional power. My neck hairs remained respectful.
The new shrieks were not coming from the receding predator. I turned quickly to the new blip I was picking up, now on my right. I locked in on two more hawks. These were flying about sixteen feet off the deck and traveling in the same direction as the rogue who, only a fraction of a second earlier, gave me a brief glimpse into the last moments of a small mammal. The first of the two was slightly smaller than the avant-guard that just buzzed me. The second was a juvenile with an twelve inch wing span. Both flew, side-by-side, as if in some sort of aerial parade. They glided along, a proud parent with its soon to be magnificent killer.
As they passed over and flew off behind their vanguard, their shrieks increased. Eventually, all three hawks banked to the south and disappearing behind the tall oaks. It was their day; they were just letting me know.
As for me, my luck on this day ran beyond what I expected. I was privileged to see something that no one ever saw. I am sure hawks have buzzed people before. But this event belongs to me. I will treasure it always. Maybe this is one of the reasons there are miracles.
Kevin Keeler
March 31, 2004
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