Eagle Grace
Blog #1
As I round the southeast side of Jim Baker Reservoir, I see him standing there on the ice, big and bold as you please. There’s no mistaking an eagle for any other bird here on the water. Even in silhouette, neither the biggest crow—nor raven, either—even comes close. Not this time of year. It’s a bald. Or, if you prefer, Haliaeetus leucocephalus. The angle of the sun changes as I walk. I can see the white head.
He’s not afraid of me or the other walkers as we make our rounds of the lake. Of course, being able to stand fifty feet out on the ice helps his courage. No one’s going to risk going out there today; the ice is slightly thick in one place, yet still it’s mostly open water. He needs the open water. For fish—his preferred food—with which this lake is stocked. Although he’ll settle for carrion and road kill if he has to. After all, he and his kin have survived the deadly DDT and other pesticides. They have long lived on the cusp of human cruelty. Now at least, they have some protection, offered by the same species that in the past has worked so hard, yet so effortlessly, to harm them.
As I reach the closest point to him, on the east side of the walking path, I stop. And just watch. He sees me, too, though the only acknowledgement he makes is a slight turn of that white head. He’s too far away for me to see the gold of his beak. Or the glint of his eye. No wonder the Roman army chose him as their talisman. Such a regal posture. And such stage presence! I stand still. And stay quiet. Pretend I’m a cottonwood sapling growing up just there, atop the mound of rip-rap that separates the path from what there is of shoreline at this ancient gravel pit. Several years ago, it was made by human hands into a lake, as part of an open space managed jointly by Adams County and the City of Westminster. I stand for many minutes, watching him watch me.
I am not romantic about eagles. They’re predatory birds, the epitome of that phrase “Nature red in tooth and claw” that the English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson became famous for (even though others said it before he did). Neither am I “patriotic” about eagles, in one sense of the word. Like Benjamin Franklin, I would much rather have the turkey as our national bird, for lots of different reasons. Be that as it may. I do respect this bird, and realize the symbol of power eagles represent to the natural world—and to so many who honor that power, that world, in far deeper ways.
After several minutes of determined watching, I go on my way. Leave him in peace. But I can’t help looking back as I walk, rounding to the south side of the lake. I turn my head once, twice—and that second time, my glance is just in time to see him spread those magnificent dark wings, all six to eight feet of them, and hitch a ride on the air above a gallery of bare cottonwoods. At that moment, a second eagle rises and follows. A friend, or his mate? Smaller than he is, certainly. She follows. He drifts and loops above the trees, then crosses Lowell Boulevard as he circles, then drifts, and circles again. There’s an intersection in their lives.
They’re acquainted.
They dip and rise toward, then away from, one another. He turns. She follows. She turns back, swoops toward him, cuts beneath his wing. He rises and rises, then turns back toward her, moving in a figure-eight around her. They rise higher together, catch an updraft, hold those strong, flat wings steady as they move south over the private lake across the boulevard. Then up and on they go to cross Clear Creek; they turn and follow its thread, still rising. I stand and watch each aerobatic pirouette. For how long I can’t say. If feels as if, for this moment, there are only the three of us in the world; that an animal grace has been bestowed upon me. I learned about grace long ago, during my Catholic school days. We were taught that it was the favor of the divine bestowed upon us. It couldn’t really be earned or increased, our parish priests and nuns insisted, though that’s a debate that still goes on. The world, and the universe that contains it, is the only way I can understand divinity these days. I can’t limit it to a single being or phenomenon. But standing there, staring up until the eagle pair become dark apostrophes in the icy blue of the January sky, I feel the grace of these eagle lives blessing mine.
Have I earned it? I’m not sure. But the sense of its bestowing fills me, stays with me, follows me home.
Sources:
Field Guide to the Birds of North America. National Geographic. Washington, D.C. Third edition. 1987.
“In Memoriam A.H.H.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Memoriam_A.H.H.
Accessed January 27, 2019.