been away too long
yesterday anne & todd & i fished the little blackfoot, a resilient stream with racnherized banks, cow-beaten right up to the water. on the drive there i told anne: "there are always eagles here," and as we ended our walk upstream, i saw a huddled form in a tree about thirty yards away. i went to switch my camera lens to zoom, not for a picture but for a better view, but she'd already seen us pointing at her. she opened her powerful wings and glided from the tree as though on a string, looping herself away from us and upstream, white head and tail, raven-black body.
i piggybacked anne across the stream and back to the car, where we said our goodbyes (the weekend certainly passed too quickly) and she rolled on northward towards helena and beyond -- rogers pass and griffles (great falls). we pointed the jeep back toward the clark fork, but before we reached the confluence we saw another bald eagle, perched in the top branches of a tree with his head pointed over his shoulder. he looked like a junior high student's drawing of an eagle, unmoving, inanimate. no doubt he saw the flicker of my pupils as i caught sight of him in the tree, twenty-seconds of unaware eye contact at seventy miles an hour. on the way home, i saw four more bald eagles -- one flying behind a flock of ducks. in pursuit? two at the same time, in trees about tenty yards apart. a couple? we also saw a golden eagle in the ditch next to the interstate, picking at a deer carcass. when i first noticed him, his tail was in the air and his head down; he was a strange black monster beside the highway. he righted himself in time for us to identify him, as we flew past him, not a stone's throw away but blurringly fast. in all there were seven eagles yesterday, two in flight, and i wonder what magic they bespeak.
i piggybacked anne across the stream and back to the car, where we said our goodbyes (the weekend certainly passed too quickly) and she rolled on northward towards helena and beyond -- rogers pass and griffles (great falls). we pointed the jeep back toward the clark fork, but before we reached the confluence we saw another bald eagle, perched in the top branches of a tree with his head pointed over his shoulder. he looked like a junior high student's drawing of an eagle, unmoving, inanimate. no doubt he saw the flicker of my pupils as i caught sight of him in the tree, twenty-seconds of unaware eye contact at seventy miles an hour. on the way home, i saw four more bald eagles -- one flying behind a flock of ducks. in pursuit? two at the same time, in trees about tenty yards apart. a couple? we also saw a golden eagle in the ditch next to the interstate, picking at a deer carcass. when i first noticed him, his tail was in the air and his head down; he was a strange black monster beside the highway. he righted himself in time for us to identify him, as we flew past him, not a stone's throw away but blurringly fast. in all there were seven eagles yesterday, two in flight, and i wonder what magic they bespeak.
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