Of Eagles

I am not so wise as to know what wis­dom is, and pre­tend­ing only calls up its oppo­site, folly. 

A cou­ple of years ago I was cross­ing one of the float­ing bridges that spans Lake Wash­ing­ton, here near Seat­tle. You can see the bridge in the image below.

I was dri­ving east — in the image from right to left. It was late in the day and a gold­en light illu­mi­nat­ed the bridge and the dark waters north and south, a lit­tle rougher to the south — as usu­al. Just past the “high-rise” sec­tion (on the right), as I came through the arched met­al of the truss­es, an eagle sud­den­ly dove down in front of me toward the waters to the right, talons extend­ed. My car, trav­el­ing fifty some­thing miles an hour, was bare­ly a dis­trac­tion to its pur­pose. It missed my wind­shield by a gen­er­ous 12 feet or so, the gleam­ing white head and deft wings focused sole­ly on the fall toward its objec­tive, fish or fowl. The whole thing last­ed only a few sec­onds but I can tell you it made my day. Ask what I remem­ber from the meet­ings ear­li­er that after­noon. Noth­ing at all com­pared to that extra­or­di­nary flash of the bird and talons. The human was just a blank block of wood to be eas­i­ly cir­cum­vent­ed through the glow­ing light. In the inter­stices of the human world, the eagle had but one thing on its mind, to find its mark.

Flip for­ward a few years. I am facil­i­tat­ing a work­shop at a beau­ti­ful retreat cen­ter, also here in Seat­tle. Out the win­dows from our room, across the pond and its foun­tain, and in the bar­ren trees just on the oth­er side of the grounds is a large eagles’ nest. Every so often, as the sem­i­nar pro­gress­es I cast an eye toward the nest and fre­quent­ly see an eagle either cir­cling above it or stand­ing on its edge. How love­ly that this extra­or­di­nary bird is there, offer­ing its pres­ence as a cat­a­lyst to our small human discoveries.

I imag­ine that eagles know some­thing of a kind of nat­ur­al wis­dom that we human beings are lucky to touch. And I am inspired by these two larg­er images of div­ing and nest­ing. The div­ing is full of force and cap­ture; the nest­ing is all pat­terns of pro­tec­tion and nur­tu­rance. (An extra­or­di­nary image from the Rap­tor Resource Project shows the lengths to which an eagle can go to pro­tect its kind.)

Oh, I know, its not wise at all to anthro­po­mor­phize these incom­pa­ra­ble crea­tures. But I respect the eagles both as beings in their own right and as cat­a­lysts to my brain’s capac­i­ty to make a per­son­al metaphor, one that holds me up just as well as their wings hold them in their own cir­cling above the water or the nest. 

What is wis­dom, you or I may ask. What takes us to the next lev­el? In the inter­stices of a crowd­ed human world, the eagle finds it way, just as we must find ours. I can’t com­pare myself to some oth­er species. I can only rely on the thing with­in that tells me what life is and how it goes. I can­not doubt that instinct lest I starve, lest I for­get to care for those that need me. Nature push­es, and in the white air and the pale wis­dom of the win­ter sun, how can I be any­thing at all with­out this irre­ducible arc toward some unknown, unstat­ed completion?

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