in awe of hawks

Driving back to Richmond from Connersville today, I saw a hawk--or, at least, some kind of bird of prey--gliding overhead, parallel to the road but going in the opposite direction as me.  I always get a little excited when I see a bird of prey, and today I started reflecting on that excitement.  I think it’s that a hawk is not something I expect to see.  It’s something wild, something that soars in the American southwest, something American Indians got to see, but I do not.

A lot of the time we’re surprised or horrified to find just how much damage we have done and are doing to our environment, to hear how rapidly other species are declining.  Yet at the same time, I think we are inculcated with this notion that nature already has been dominated, displaced, overcome.  It’s not necessarily something we’re told is good or bad; it’s just something that is.  That wild animals--and by wild animals I mean those a little more wild than squirrels and goldfinches--are something that we city people just don’t get to see anymore.  Something that simply isn’t part of our lives.

Perhaps reconnected ourselves and our neighbors with the earth takes more than finding out what is wrong.  We need to realize that there are still things that can be right.