A magical 15 minutes
Trying to beat the darkness to my car after an unexpectedly long walk this evening I spot an owl taking off from a telephone pole. He swoops down from the top, makes a long graceful inverted arc toward the next pole and then flares and pulls back sharply, gaining enough lift to take it (just barely) right through the 3rd and 4th wires; and, much to my happy surprise, right over the head of an identical owl setting calmly on the top cross bar of its own pole. I can hear the delayed exchange (approx one second, from that distance) from the seven- or eight-hundred yards between us.
First owl: "Hoo-hoo"
Second owl:"Hoo"
He (or maybe it was a she) sails on by, performs another long inverted arc, pulls up sharply, exactly as the previous demonstration, and then settles, perfectly effortlessly, on top of the cross-bar. They exchangs a couple more Hoos and then leap-frog one more set of poles, performing the exact same maneuvers, identically and with the same beautiful animal grace and relaxed precision.
They continue this game (?) or ritual or whatever it is---launch-dip-flare-dip-flare-land---one after another, almost like two surveyors exchanging places, as they leap-frog down the little valley toward me. One of them, the female I'm guessing (since I have no clue), settles like a helium filled pillow on the cross-bar of the pole directly over my head, looking down at me by rotating its head 180 degrees backwards and peering straight down.
I Hoooo, she Hoo-hoo's back, and we continue the friendly stare-down for about another 30 seconds---until He, the other one, swoops over. The Hoo / Hoo-hoo exchange is crisp and close and it sounds a bit like a verbal baton-handoff, or maybe a casual high-five, in owlese.
She stares back down at me for another minute-or-so. And she doesn't appear to be in any big hurry to take her turn when He Hoo...Hoooooo....Hoo-hoo's. She promptly leans forward, falls & flaps simultaneously and drops into the long inverted arc, just as before. But this time, when she arrives at the pole, rather than surf over the swell of the pole, she flares and settles down right on top of it, between the 2nd and 3rd wires, standing directly opposite and facing He-owl, maybe a wing's length apart. They stand there silent and still for a moment, and then set about their discussion, which sounds, if not heated, then at least a little more serious than the situation warrants.
He, telling her to stay away from the clumsy bald apes down there: "You can't trust them, I don't care how harmless they look...."
She, responding, "Oh, take a pill. What can it do all the way down there?"
He, with a bit of sage advice: "I've heard about them; they're evil, and they're bigger, and closer, than you think."
Of course, it sounds rather more like: Hoo / Hoo-hoo / Hoo-HOO-HooHooHoo-HOO / and so on and so forth. Something like that; it's always hard, not to mention a bit imprecise---this avian-english translation stuff.
The duskness is almost total in the east, and when I turn back toward the sunset I'm stunned by the sparse beauty. Out of the southwest comes a miles-long procession of glowing orange pteradactyls, some rather Monet-ish, some a bit more Cubish (angular, disjointed, malproportioned, you know), but all seeming to be organized fairly well behind the first pre-historic giant floating motionlessly above me (well, almost motionlessly; there was a slight breeze). I stand there, dumbstruck, and watch the rapid evolution of burning and thawing colors: the flaming orange melting into the ever-deepening blue, both seeming to melt into the other. The sun slips its big bald fiery head back onto its pillow for the night.
Wow, I think, doesn't get much better than this: leap-frogging, talking owls, and now this unbelievable sunset. No, I think, it really doesn't get any better than this. And then I turn to see if my new-found, albeit prudently cautious, friends are still conversing on telephone pole. But the next bit of snychronicity, the piece de resistance of this charmed evening, presents itself, takes my breath away, like a god rising out of a volcano.
Directly atop the row of peaks---San Jac, Marion, Gene---to the northeast, there appears to be an almost sparkling white caldera blasting white-hot plasma jets high into the dark blue eternity above it. It is so....so..... well, truth be told, my command of English is far too sketchy to attempt any sort of poetic justice to the power and terrible beauty of this....this thing.
Of course, all this aforementioned jaw-dropping, and aweing all transpire in a small fraction of one second; and I immediately recognize this phosphorescent inferno as our humble little co-journer, Gaia, the moon, hiding behind a very small orographic (mountain-generated) condensation cloud which is being blown, very energetically I might add, over the massive geologic feature of the three peaks. There is not a whisper of a cloud anywhere else in the eastern sky; and the small cloud (moving perhaps 50 or 60 knots, yet not actually going anywhere, thanks to the wonders of mountain atmospheric phenomena) is situated, relative to me anyway, and also relative to the moon, just perfectly, so that the moon, even though it's fully super-horizontal, so to speak, is completely obscured; yet its photons easily blast their way through the thin curtain of vapor, making it appear as though there might be some sort of arc-welding operation, of cosmic proportions, going on atop our three peaks.
I hear the owls Hoo-hooing way off in the distance, having leap-frogged another 700- or 800 yards closer to the moon and its mind-altering special effects show.
And all in the space of about 15 minutes.
But the really amazing thing about it is, it ocurrs to me as I walked home, that this is going on all around me, all the time, every day, every minute, every moment of every minute of every life.
Sun and stars, moons, and volcanoes; and dolphins, alligator lizards, and children; funny faces and elephant's butts in the piles of giant granite boulders, gophers putzing about beneath our feet; spiders zipping up their meal for the night, for tomorrow's breakfast; and lighting bugs, and sand crabs, and..........
Damn, it's all so good.
First owl: "Hoo-hoo"
Second owl:"Hoo"
He (or maybe it was a she) sails on by, performs another long inverted arc, pulls up sharply, exactly as the previous demonstration, and then settles, perfectly effortlessly, on top of the cross-bar. They exchangs a couple more Hoos and then leap-frog one more set of poles, performing the exact same maneuvers, identically and with the same beautiful animal grace and relaxed precision.
They continue this game (?) or ritual or whatever it is---launch-dip-flare-dip-flare-land---one after another, almost like two surveyors exchanging places, as they leap-frog down the little valley toward me. One of them, the female I'm guessing (since I have no clue), settles like a helium filled pillow on the cross-bar of the pole directly over my head, looking down at me by rotating its head 180 degrees backwards and peering straight down.
I Hoooo, she Hoo-hoo's back, and we continue the friendly stare-down for about another 30 seconds---until He, the other one, swoops over. The Hoo / Hoo-hoo exchange is crisp and close and it sounds a bit like a verbal baton-handoff, or maybe a casual high-five, in owlese.
She stares back down at me for another minute-or-so. And she doesn't appear to be in any big hurry to take her turn when He Hoo...Hoooooo....Hoo-hoo's. She promptly leans forward, falls & flaps simultaneously and drops into the long inverted arc, just as before. But this time, when she arrives at the pole, rather than surf over the swell of the pole, she flares and settles down right on top of it, between the 2nd and 3rd wires, standing directly opposite and facing He-owl, maybe a wing's length apart. They stand there silent and still for a moment, and then set about their discussion, which sounds, if not heated, then at least a little more serious than the situation warrants.
He, telling her to stay away from the clumsy bald apes down there: "You can't trust them, I don't care how harmless they look...."
She, responding, "Oh, take a pill. What can it do all the way down there?"
He, with a bit of sage advice: "I've heard about them; they're evil, and they're bigger, and closer, than you think."
Of course, it sounds rather more like: Hoo / Hoo-hoo / Hoo-HOO-HooHooHoo-HOO / and so on and so forth. Something like that; it's always hard, not to mention a bit imprecise---this avian-english translation stuff.
The duskness is almost total in the east, and when I turn back toward the sunset I'm stunned by the sparse beauty. Out of the southwest comes a miles-long procession of glowing orange pteradactyls, some rather Monet-ish, some a bit more Cubish (angular, disjointed, malproportioned, you know), but all seeming to be organized fairly well behind the first pre-historic giant floating motionlessly above me (well, almost motionlessly; there was a slight breeze). I stand there, dumbstruck, and watch the rapid evolution of burning and thawing colors: the flaming orange melting into the ever-deepening blue, both seeming to melt into the other. The sun slips its big bald fiery head back onto its pillow for the night.
Wow, I think, doesn't get much better than this: leap-frogging, talking owls, and now this unbelievable sunset. No, I think, it really doesn't get any better than this. And then I turn to see if my new-found, albeit prudently cautious, friends are still conversing on telephone pole. But the next bit of snychronicity, the piece de resistance of this charmed evening, presents itself, takes my breath away, like a god rising out of a volcano.
Directly atop the row of peaks---San Jac, Marion, Gene---to the northeast, there appears to be an almost sparkling white caldera blasting white-hot plasma jets high into the dark blue eternity above it. It is so....so..... well, truth be told, my command of English is far too sketchy to attempt any sort of poetic justice to the power and terrible beauty of this....this thing.
Of course, all this aforementioned jaw-dropping, and aweing all transpire in a small fraction of one second; and I immediately recognize this phosphorescent inferno as our humble little co-journer, Gaia, the moon, hiding behind a very small orographic (mountain-generated) condensation cloud which is being blown, very energetically I might add, over the massive geologic feature of the three peaks. There is not a whisper of a cloud anywhere else in the eastern sky; and the small cloud (moving perhaps 50 or 60 knots, yet not actually going anywhere, thanks to the wonders of mountain atmospheric phenomena) is situated, relative to me anyway, and also relative to the moon, just perfectly, so that the moon, even though it's fully super-horizontal, so to speak, is completely obscured; yet its photons easily blast their way through the thin curtain of vapor, making it appear as though there might be some sort of arc-welding operation, of cosmic proportions, going on atop our three peaks.
I hear the owls Hoo-hooing way off in the distance, having leap-frogged another 700- or 800 yards closer to the moon and its mind-altering special effects show.
And all in the space of about 15 minutes.
But the really amazing thing about it is, it ocurrs to me as I walked home, that this is going on all around me, all the time, every day, every minute, every moment of every minute of every life.
Sun and stars, moons, and volcanoes; and dolphins, alligator lizards, and children; funny faces and elephant's butts in the piles of giant granite boulders, gophers putzing about beneath our feet; spiders zipping up their meal for the night, for tomorrow's breakfast; and lighting bugs, and sand crabs, and..........
Damn, it's all so good.
posted by Jefferson | 8:27 PM
|
0 comments
