I need to mark this time. Yesterday, for the first time in my life – of many decades – I saw an American bald eagle. It was a mystical moment for me and the mysticism lingers still. The eagle’s visit to me did not occur at the pond. But I think it came to me because of the pond. So, I’ll write about it here.
My whole life, I’ve had the understanding that there is Native American blood in my veins, that I have Black Foot tribe ancestry, from perhaps eight generations ago. Though the lineage is not exact in the family tree, the lore of it has been with my family for generations. Throughout my childhood, seeing my sister’s coarse, straight black hair and one brother’s ability to run or swim with astounding endurance seemed to confirm the genetic trail to native roots. And I have been drawn to Native American study since I was young.
Last week, as I packed for a weekend visit with a friend who has a home on an island that is bridged to Maine’s mainland (a place I have visited many times over the past many years), I kept thinking about the American bald eagle. The thought was persistent, as if it were instinctive – I needed to see an eagle. Specifically, I was thinking that I wanted my friend to show me an eagle. I thought I would ask her to take me out in her boat. My friend has shown me amazing pictures she’s taken of the bird and told me about the locations of their nests, which she sees from her boat during the summer months.
When I arrived in Maine, the thought was still with me, but I had realized even as I packed that the boating season was over and my friend could not show me an eagle. But thoughts of the bird were in my mind.
Yesterday, when my visit came to an end, I followed my friend – her car ahead of mine – off the island and south on Route 1 to Bath where we planned to shop in two stores. We’d driven about thirty minutes. As we drove up an incline just before the bridge into Bath, I saw something pass across the road ahead of us, where the road met the sky. In retrospect, I’m sure I would have missed this bit of action had my eye not been trained by my pond walks.
My mind followed the logic of the setting. In less than a second, the tips of sky-high work cranes of the Bath ship yard came into view – again, where the road met the sky. So, my mind attributed the action I’d glimpsed to those tips. And just as I began to marvel at the height of the cranes, a large bird glided low in the sky to the right of the road. As it arched back to the road I could see it clearly against the sky. Its wings were large, like a heron (again, my mind’s only association to the wondrous wing-span) but the shape of the wings was not the distinctive shape of the heron’s. And the body was not the elongated stretch of the heron.
As my mind categorized the bird as a hawk and a scavenger, the tail lights of my friend’s car came on and she pulled over. She’s a lover of nature so I knew she was stopping to see the bird. And because she was stopping I knew we were seeing something unusual. With her car off the road and mine at a stop, I could clearly see the bird’s graceful dip to the road just before me. In this instant, my mind attached to the bird. I knew an eagle had come to me.
The eagle landed on the road less than thirty feet ahead of me, and it pecked a couple of times at a small dead animal. With the sunlight behind it, I could see the silhouette of the scraps of food it tugged at. Cars came from the other side of the road and the bird lifted off with no effort, and with full command of the air its wings pushed against. It flew straight at me and then passed alongside me just fifteen feet or so from the car. It was high enough that the sky was behind it, allowing me a clear and close view of it. I looked first at its face and in it I saw an animal fully confident, and totally at ease. Its yellow beak and golden eyes were clear to see as well as its white smooth head. And the sun illuminated its fanned tail, the beauty of which caused me to be overwhelmed and to marvel – with every fiber of my being – of this life we live.
Interestingly, I can’t recall getting a calculated measure of its size. Simply, an impression of incomprehensible size was all my mind could muster. I know my mind did not have an exact point of reference for this bird to fit into. A new category, a single slot category, was created in my mind for the eagle. There is nothing else like it in my knowledge.
I spent the rest of yesterday and today working at trying to reconcile that by my wanting to see an eagle, one came to me. I am certain this was not a coincidence. In fact, I think the bird chose the last possible moment of my visit to its habitat to come to me. Just before we crossed the bridge into a small city, it humbled to picking at road kill to fulfil my need for its presence. And I believe the depth of my need is what drew it to me.
Several years ago, life took me by the tail and began thrashing me around. Had I known what I was in for, I think I would have checked out. I am tired and I have almost lost the sense of who I am. The pilings of my life have been removed one by one. Nothing is in order. Nothing sits on the structures I presumed would stay with me till the end of my life. I am now at a point of transition for which I don’t feel I have strength. I think this is why, instinctively, I felt the need to be in the presence of an eagle. In my study today I have learned that the eagle symbolizes opportunity, guardianship, and power to the Native American. What I’ve been witnessing at the pond has sustained me. But the eagle now in my heart will carry me and guide me to where I will live again.
SilverLining 