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There
Are Eagles Among Us
I
live a stone's throw from a bike trail that loops and winds for three miles
through a horse pasture, along irrigation ditches, past a sheep farm, and
through neighborhoods. The horse
pasture is home to hundreds, maybe thousands, of prairie dogs who scold us as we
walk, jog, and bike through their neighborhood. They sit on their front-porch mounds and boldly chuck and
chirrup as we approach, only to high tail it down under when our shadows finally
cross theirs. The biggest tree in
the pasture is a dead cottonwood on which roosts whatever bird of prey is
currently holding court. Usually
it's a hawk, but I've seen turkey vultures and in the winter golden eagles and
bald eagles sometimes grace our skies. They ride the wind, rising and circling,
scanning for mice and snakes and rabbits. They
rise like smoke, carving out a piece of sky, auguring a groove in my mind's eye.
That groove has a shape, and that shape is love.
I love this land and sky that I share with my neighbors.
I love the round of life and the trail that encircles my village and the
eagles that seem to trace that circle in the sky. Every
day I lift up my eyes to the hills that stretch as far as I can see, north to
south, a blue western wall. I find
courage in their massiveness and peace in their steadfast watch over my home
front. My twin towers—Longs Peak
and Mount Meeker—are glorious. My
favorite view of them is straight on. They
rise out of the highway when I drive due west, symmetrical, ancient, maternal.
I
called my mother Tuesday night to cry. I
called her from my hotel room. Like
everyone else, I couldn't turn off the TV that kept broadcasting images I could
no longer bear to watch. Two new
images have been burned into my brain—one is the outline of a plane in a
building, the other is the avalanche of plane-torn building debris .
My circles are shattered and Tuesday night I didn't think I would ever
smile again. I was alone in a hotel
room, my family over a thousand miles away. I couldn't hold them or touch them.
I couldn't get up at night to ensure that my children were safe in their
beds. I couldn't curl inside my
husband's arms. So I called my
mother, and we cried together. Wednesday
I left Palo Alto with Bill, a friend from work who had flown out with me Monday
morning. Two days of driving the
"loneliest highway in America" brought me home.
Some people need people to bring them out of despair.
I need solitude and great, wide, empty, wind-swept places.
I need canyon walls carved by rivers, glowing with morning sun that
glances off rocks, ricocheting god rays back to heaven.
I need rainbows spanning valleys and dark storm clouds back lit by the
setting sun. I need mountains
bathed in the warm, pink light of early evening.
Bill
and I rarely bothered to turn on the radio.
Most of the time, we were out of range of any station anyway.
We told each other our life stories, and those of our parents and their
parents. How and when they came to
America, what they were looking for, and what they found.
We told each other stories of courage and faith, prejudice and heart
ache, honor and love. Thursday
we had breakfast in a restaurant overlooking the Green River in Utah.
For an hour, I sat and watched the water flow under the bridge and then
swirl in an eddy caused by a sand bar before it found clear passage downstream.
The farmland near the river was lush and the trees were just barely
flecked with the gold of autumn. We
watched slow-moving tractors cross the bridge as we ate our eggs and toast—a
world away from the chaos and terror we knew were still center stage.
And I wondered what would happen to this world, this remote world of
green fields and lazy rivers, rosy canyons and endless vistas. Birds are migrating now. Huge flocks rest at night in the creek bed across from my house. As I walk the trail, I startle them, sending up noisy, black-feathered plumes of starlings and grackles. Occasionally, I see a contrail again and I mentally connect the arc it makes with those of its brothers, drawing circles in my mind once more around the earth. I think about the passengers of UA 93 who fought back and made a difference. I think about firefighters and ambulance drivers, medics and airline pilots. I think about stock brokers and store clerks and journalists. There are eagles among us. The circle is unbroken.
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