The Windhover

This past weekend I took my daughter to a theme park. It was to be her day – popcorn, candy and rides. We did the bumper cars twice, rode the dumbo planes and mini rollercoaster. She loved it. While stopping to get a drink I noticed an open theater and nearby a huge net covering the forest. It was an aviary – a place wherein to keep birds and keep them from flying away. As I approached I noticed a large placard regarding eagles. It introduced me to this effort involving the protection of birds of prey – raptors. I looked up into the netted forest and saw several of the huge, bald eagles sitting on low tree limbs. My first thought was, "these fellas are meant to soar at 1000s of feet – here they are grounded." My heart was sad. Nearby, an even smaller, caged area contained eagles which could not fly at all.

We entered the open theater and waited for the "show" (that word is a disservice to what we witnessed). There, we saw, live, these incredible creatures. The handlers brought out owls, hawks and eagles of several kinds. All were majestic, beautiful, powerful. An eagle has enough strength in its huge talon to snap your finger in two. It could pick up and fly off with an adolescent child or full-grown sheep. Its vision is as keen as you or I with powerful binoculars and can spot a mouse moving miles away. Its wingspan is larger, by far, than a man is tall. Its eyes are striking, powerful, overwhelming. And as we saw these birds flying over our heads – literally inches above (one nearly clipped me as I sat) we were given the statistics: there were, some 100 years ago, nearly a half million bald eagles in the wild in North America. There are now a few thousand. Each day, some where in the U.S., a raptor is shot from the sky by someone wielding a gun. This happens about a half dozen times daily – why?

I am reminded of Isaiah when I see these birds, "he who waits upon the Lord shall renew his strength. He shall mount up on wings as eagles...."

I am reminded of Hopkin's Windhover where he describes seeing a raptor soaring on the gusts and declares it an image of God, Lord over the earth:

I CAUGHT this morning morning's minion, king-dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding of the rolling-level-underneath-him steady-air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing

The raptors kept in the aviary were all there for a reason. They had been mostly shot or hit by a car or sick in some way. Some had been raised by humans since birth, and no matter how many attempts had been made to return them to the wild, they would always seek out human contact. For some, this also meant their deaths. As each bird was brought out I sat in amazement at its beauty and grandeur. Like beholding ancient kings, you simply could not tarnish their nobility. Finally, a golden eagle stretched his wings wide and it dwarfed the handler.

I thought about the eagles who simply refused to soar, who had forgotten, or never learned of their ability to reach the heights. They had no clue what they were missing. They could be scraping the edge of heaven with aplomb. They could be reaching the apex of the planet and lord their majesty over it, but, instead, they were content to be shackled by leather to a leather glove, to be handed meat scraps like pet jackals. They simply didn't know. They simply didn't understand.

They only know of the shackle and scraps and that's what they prefer. Learning to soar, learning to dive, learning to kill and eat is tough, and we refuse to try, to struggle, to rise above – to soar above. We'd rather stay where its safe, where we know the familiar and the familiar knows us. But if only we'd try, little by little, to flap, to fly then someday we would soar. We could learn to climb and we could stand atop of our world, Lords of it and above all those things we once allowed to shackle us to earth….