Hawk Watching

Well, I'm just going to keep writing about him until someone tells me to stop.

He was there again yesterday as I drove home from work. It is now "his" lightpole - near the post office building on Postal Road - just a few hundred feet from where the bigger man-made "birds" take off. As impressive as those other large birds are sometimes, I am more drawn to the feathered pole-sitter. He's beautiful, graceful, regal - as you can see, I'm totally enamored.

Amazing how easily I can fall in love with something that will not knowingly hurt me. Is this why I just want to surround myself with animals - feathered, furred, finned? That I will always be the matriarch - the giver, the nurturer and they will always "need" me? Or am I just fascinated by their simple beauty and unconditional love for the world around them? Probably a little of both. Instinctively animals know that nature is the real provider, not their skin-mother. Too bad humans have lost that instinct.

I will continue to hawk-watch and write about him. There's too much written about human angst - over problems that, for the most part, we have created for ourselves. (This writer included.) And not enough written about the wonders that surround us.

If enough people forget their inner turmoil and reach out to the natural world, it may go along way to healing the wounds - real or perceived.

I've decided that each month I will try to do at least one thing to reconnect to nature. I may go back to the Lakota Wolf Preserve or I just may take a walk in Hugh Moore Park. I have to do it - for my heart's sake - for my self preservation.

I cannot let that beauty come to me only on the drive home from work when I happen to see my hawk on his lightpole.