WHERE DO THEY COME FROM?

So it got cold as hell up here. Minus 24 a few nights ago and at least 10 below every night since – never above zero for three days. But that’s not all bad because it definitely drove me inside where several writing projects waited for me like a visiting mother-in-law. (One of those projects is my pledge to do just what I’m doing now – figuring out how to “get with the blogging thing”.)

But I wasn’t going to let a little inclement weather keep me inside all day. Instead of a brisk walk I’ve been taking a early am drive around the countryside. There is nothing like sub-zero nights to bring the hungry critters out into the first rays of sunshine. I’ve been seeing literally hundreds of deer, sharp tailed grouse, crows, and here’s the thing that relates to what some have been commenting on: scores of eagles!

Deer hunting season ended a few weeks ago and the gut piles left scattered over the countryside have been impossible to see until a few days ago. Now, everyone has at least two eagles – balds and goldens – camped out on them. We see eagles all year long out here but when it gets really cold, they are suddenly everywhere.

Several years ago we slaughtered a buffalo on a cold, foggy morning. I had not seen an eagle for months, but as we drove away from slaughter site I looked in the rearview mirror and saw an incongruous slice of black gliding through the fog and decending, as if on a cable, to the remains of the buffalo we had just slaughtered. How could it have known? What brought it to that exact spot?

So I’m thinking about birds of prey and thinking that Bill Gee’s sharpshine hawk is not that different from my eagles. I’m also thinking that I might forget about those projects that need doing, sit down in the sun from the front window, as several of you have suggested,  and read a little poetry. I’m thinking I might dig out the Robbinson Jeffers.