Hawk

The air up here is crisp, invigorating, laced subtly with the clinging frost of winter.

Green forest carpets the steep slopes below, pine and fir that glisten dark green in the warmthless light of midday.  Up here, the trees have given way to smaller scrub brush that rises barely to my ankles, eking out a harsh existence in the hard packed mountain soil.

The north wind blows past me, casting its high pitched wail in challenge to the new coming spring.  A brook runs counterpoint, laced with green beneath the still present sheets of ice.  And above, swoops the hawk.

I pause for a moment, planting my booted feet in the muddy earth beside the stream, and shade my eyes to follow the hawk's path as it swoops down the canyon.

The wind catches its outspread wings, carrying the hawk high between the slate gray mountain peaks.  Sunlight occasionally glints off the brilliant orange-red plumage on its tail, giving the illusion that the hawk is burning a path through the azure blue sky.

It is hunting, I can tell that by the way that its head turns from side to side, scanning the terrain below.  Has he seen me, in my checkered red flannel and blue jeans?  If he does, he gives no indication, moving leisurely down the canyon.

I can feel the soggy soil beginning to soak through the leather of my boots, and the biting cold water makes me shiver.  But I do not overtly move or make a sound, lest I drive the hawk away.

The canyon is a wide one, interwoven by freshwater streams feeding deep blue mirrors of water that are glacial lakes.  The slopes above are barren even of brush, etched out in slate gray rock, blanketed by ivory white snow banks.  It is almost too perfect as the hawk swoops overhead, a crisp artist's rendering of the real world.

I watch as the hawk circles silently above, born on the invisible arms of the wind.  For a moment, he pauses, his forward motion perfectly balanced by the head wind.  And, in that second, he stares straight at me.  I shiver, not entirely with the cold now, and feel a kinship with the hunter in the sky, flying free in the icy winteryness above.

The moment holds, and releases.

The hawk swoops onward, disappearing around a bend in the canyon, and I raise my hand in farewell.

~ PeteVG