Fresh Air, Freedom, & Friends

Imagine the strain, effort, skill, and pure intuitive sense it takes for our animals friends to return to spring life! It is as if the sun itself stirs us into a feeling nearly instinctual- get outside!

Yes! What the fresh outdoors can teach us about appreciation for the natural world. We hear frogs and birds; the buds are just beginning to show on the serviceberry (shadbush) trees, and what a better way to celebrate than for a morning walk with old dog.

Sunny, my 16 year old soul mate, decided to head to the field to see the pond and our friends who were floating by the evening before. There are few things in life as special as old friends, and when you reunite with them after a winter of cold and uncertainty, what a wash over of sunshine you feel, and rejuvenation soon follows.

Upon heading down the hill the previous evening to see our geese couple who return year after year, our happy male beaver floated perfectly around his friends as if to say hello and welcome back! It’s amazing how the creatures glide around one another yet go about their lives with such a sense of purpose. How admirable as they are never in the way of one another. In fact, beavers enjoy the company while their lodge is huge enough for our female Canada goose to lay her eggs and nest upon while her heroic husband honks to the world.

Mr. Beaver is immune to these outbursts, of course.

Back to the morning! As old dog and I walk backwards in the sunshine, relishing in the fresh air and warmth, we look upwards into the blue sky and see a marvelous and breathtaking sight, something out of a movie, and a moment of our lives that we will never forget.

Higher in the sky than I’ve seen most birds fly, I spotted an eagle. But then, not one eagle, not two, or three, but seven eagles in all. And to think, above our little pond! A bright, beautiful, random Saturday morning, and the bald eagles came to visit.

Running and screaming, yet trying to aim for quiet that was so unnatural, our hearts celebrated this remarkable moment; we ran as our eyes were glued to the sky. This picture below was taken with our super zoom camera, yet there is a blur as I zoom in here. We estimate the bird above was at a height unmeasurable to our eyes, and I dare not estimate to do it an injustice.

As the eagles slowly circled for minutes, high and low, within the company of their group, I imagined their family dynamic and story, as two to three were immature based on feather color and pattern.

Like the geese who huddled below out of sight, to our red-shouldered hawk who screamed from her hemlock nest, and for the one brave blackbird who made her way up to an eagle to give it hell, our family was at full attention.

It seemed as if all the earth around us grew focused on one moment. All, except old dog, whose face stayed to the wind, and whose smile was for the good earth and fresh air, eagles soaring above or not. And what a beautiful moment to recognize the true power of nature in all its forms, from below the ground, to above in the endless sky.

Happy Soaring, wherever you go,

Love, LPS