One of the reasons I love living in the country is the daily connection with plant, bird and wildlife. I think it keeps me honest about our connection, role and place in the natural world.  I am known for frequently stopping the car in the middle of road to watch wildlife: a hawk flying overhead, the gnarly prehistoric looking snapping turtle crossing the road, this years new goslings from the pair of geese that return to the pond each year, a magnificent buck standing tall at the edge of the forest, or the flock of turkeys moving through that field. It never gets old.

It drives my son a little crazy. Moooommmm, do you have to stop? Yes, son I do! Check it out, observe, appreciate, we are so lucky to see this! Happily, our country road has very little traffic, so I can stop and usually take my time watching. Seeing a hawk with some prey in its talons (hope it is one of the plague of pesky mice that drive me nuts) probably will be the highlight of my day. I also talk to the animals. Yes, it’s true. I’ll admit it. Not in some Dr. Doolittle manner, but just acknowledging their presence and beauty: Good morning hawk, look at you magnificent buck, thank you turkeys. You’ll be happy to know the animals haven’t talked back….yet. I don’t think that Andrew is convinced that all this is acceptable parental behavior, but I am patient and will wait for that time when he’s in his 30’s and has his own kids and comes back to tell me how great it was that I screeched to a halt often and made him look at so much, all the time.

One of my frequent stop, watch and talk to wildlife friends lived in the valley below us. There is an old 1800’s farmhouse with a big pond, just down the road. We, neighbors and wildlife alike, all live in the headwaters of Greens Creek, one of the tributaries to the Blackwater River, which flows to the Roanoke River, which meets the Atlantic at the Albemarle Sound. At this upper end of the road/watershed, the valley is bit wider (by Blue Ridge standards) and just downstream of this pond is a wetland full of cattails, bull frogs, turtles, dragonflies, spring peepers, birds, wildflowers; a whole specialized and wonderful ecosystem. As you move further downstream, the valley becomes very narrow, rhododendron covered slopes climbing steeply to narrow ridges (I live on top of one of those ridges) and the water channelizes into a fast flowing and rather beautiful mountain creek, crossing from one side of the road to the other.

This wetland is a rich haven for a variety of wildlife and plants. When the farmhouse neighbors dug drain trenches through that area to dry it out and create more cattle grazing land, I was up in arms. Everyday, as we passed, I would get on my soap box about leaving the wetland as is, for goodness sake, all the reasons why we need these wetlands intact, all the reasons why cattle shouldn’t be running around there and that draining wetlands is regulated, for good reason, you just can’t go digging ditches when ever you want, etc, etc. Bless my son, for he ends up being the recipient of most of my rants – along with the animal talking and middle of the road stops.

For a few years there was a red tail hawk that perched on the telephone wire running above the pond and wetland: a perfect perch for surveying the surrounding area for prey. Every morning when I drove by, I would say, “Good morning hawk”. It was there more often than not. On mornings it wasn’t, I wondered where it was and if it would be back. Seeing the hawk almost daily became a comforting ritual. Then, one cold winter morning as I was heading to town, I saw in the distance that something was lying in the middle of the road.  A chill set in and as I pulled up, my heart sank and my stomach knotted. It was a hawk, and I’m quite sure it was my morning companion hawk. Damn it all. I had to get to town to meet a deadline, but I couldn’t just leave the hawk there, so I  carefully moved it to a protected place on the side of the road, planning to take care of it on my way back. A beautiful creature like this deserved more than to lay in the middle of the road, to be hit again.

Coming back, I stopped and retrieved the hawk, placing it in the back of my pickup. I was struck by how large, yet how light it was, how fearsome the talons and beak were and yet how soft the body felt. While deeply saddened for its fate, I was also in awe. Here I was holding a red tail hawk, in my own hands, getting to examine it more closely than I could have imagined possible. What an exquisite creature. I have long had an affinity for hawks and can think of several significant life changing moments that were punctuated by their presence. This was another special moment.

I took the hawk home with the intention of giving it an honoring and appropriate burial. After grabbing my shovel, I realized the ground was frozen and impenetrable and there would be no digging for awhile. It was so darn cold the hawk would also be frozen until the weather warmed, so I knew I had time. There I was, with a dead hawk in the back of my truck. Life is never dull around here. I scouted my land for the right burial spot and found it. At the end of the ridge, just down from my home,  is a slight rise, the high point on the land. My morning walks end up there often and I visit to sit and meditate. A lovely, peaceful spot with mixed forest, lady slippers and blueberries, high enough to have a view in winter, where a stiff breeze can move through the trees, and the many rocks are covered with green mossy coatings. It has long been a special place to me and I knew it was the perfect final resting place for my hawk friend.

Finally, a few warming days arrived and the ground thawed just enough for me to chip at it and dig a place for hawk. I happen to love ceremony and ritual, so I made this one good burial. Just before I laid that master of the air into it’s new earthen home, I clipped one tail feather and one wing feather, which I keep for a reminder. A reminder of the sacredness of all life, that we share this land with a host of other creatures that deserve respect and consideration, a reminder that there is much to learn from knowing and understanding the natural world around us.

We share this earth with an enormous variety of other species in tremendously diverse landscapes: it is not just a place for us to use and abuse as we damn well please. We should, at the very least, try to understand and appreciate what’s around us. Use is OK. Use with appreciation and maybe even reverence, better. Use without any thought but our own needs….NOT. I try, on a daily basis, to acknowledge the environment around me; it’s beauty, and the life support it provides. We are all in this together: humans and hawks alike. The moments I have with hawks, turtles, bears, trees, and birds keep me grounded and connected. A connection I feel the need to share with others, to help them understand that the world is a richer place when more wildland and even semi-wildland is left intact. A life where bears can’t roam, turkeys can’t nest, hawks can’t be hawks is a lesser life.

When we live in cities and suburbs it is too easy to forget that we humans, with our homes, roads, businesses and other contrivances are not the center of the universe, that there were other environments and residents here long before us, which we have displaced. We forget that we actually need those natural places, with all they entail, to support our lives and spirits. We relegate wildlife and nature experiences to something completely separate from us and our daily lives: a thing to be experienced on occasion, acknowledged and perhaps even appreciated,  but then forgotten as not relevant to our daily needs.

I am grateful for this experience with hawk, for the years it stood sentinel over the wetland and gifted me each morning with it’s presence, for it’s majesty and place in our ecosystem. I think of it every time I walk down that ridge, which is just about daily and its final resting place has become affectionately known as Hawk Hill.  I feel blessed that every day I get to enjoy forests, fields and wetlands and see wildlife, living for the most part, as nature intends. This is my neighborhood and these are my neighbors. I can’t forget.

Post script:  While I occasionally see a hawk on the wire, no new hawk has taken up daily residence. I miss seeing it. Sometimes I have the wonderful fortune to see a kingfisher, another grand bird, up there above the pond. Kingfisher days are good days. The generations of family living at the pond farmhouse came to end a few years back too. The older couple living there passed away and the land is now up for sale, has been for years now. Seems that people don’t want large acreages of forest and grazing land and an old homestead anymore. We need those large tracts of land, intact. So now the house is empty and the land less used. Someone still runs some cattle on the land, but the effort to maintain the drainage ditches has ended so, to my delight, the wetland is coming back. Yes!