The Hawk and the Spruce Tree

I woke up hard, dusty, and sore, as happens when you fall asleep in the dirt and the straw of the stables. I felt a yen for a smoke and maybe eggs, but I needed to get my bearings first. Through the stable door, across the yard, I saw some piglets suckling at an exhausted looking sow, the runt of the litter trying to find purchase amid the scramble of the mass of wriggling pink skin. I’ve always liked the runts. You play the cards you’re dealt and scramble with the rest.

Past the pigs, down the slope, I could hear the river churning, the water roiling and crashing around the rocks. There were some big boulders down there, and some pools that looked deep enough for some dives. Ever since I learned to dive at six, swimming in the morning has brought me a small measure of palpable joy, so in spite of my aching legs and sore ankle, I hobbled down the slope to the river for a swim. A cardinal was belting his morning song above me in the trees - a vox so clear and sharp that the vibrations themselves seemed to shine and shimmer in the air like newly unearthed ore from deep in the ground, sparkling with a melange of multidimensional hues upon first reflecting the light of the world.

Picking my way among the rocks on the slope down to the river, I felt that familiar knot of ire twisting in the pit of my stomach as the pain in my ankle rose through my body to my head. As if I needed a daily reminder of one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done. So it goes. The mind tries to forget but the body remembers, and the best you can do is to try to sew all those fractured memories into something coherent at the very least. Hard to have a much of a future if you don’t know the stitched-together narrative of your past.

As I arrived at the river’s edge, two ducks in one of the pools lifted into the air in tandem, their wings whistling as they sped by. I kicked off my dusty boots and then my socks, and allowed the ice-cold water to soak my feet. If only for a moment, the nagging pain in my ankle drained away, a dull numbness taking residence in the place where I’m accustomed to a persistent, smoldering, uncomfortable heat. But enough regrets for one morning, though I’ve certainly earned my fair share.

I stripped down to my essence, dirty jeans spread across a gooseberry bush to air out as I prepared myself for my leap into the water below. I’ve always been good at diving, even in pools so sketchy and shallow that they make the cops look like paragons of virtue. This one wasn’t that sketchy, but there was a big pointy rock a couple feet deep halfway across in the center. Without a second thought, I launched myself downward, my sharp hands piercing the surface like the bill of a kingfisher, my arms following, my head tucked just right, my entire body lengthening, then stiffening as I squeezed my butt and pointed my toes to take me into the sudden insulated coolness of the pool.

My ears pinched off and sound became distorted with warbles and echos that bounced around my head and silenced any remaining thoughts. For a moment, there was only the water and I was a fish, slipping through the shadows as light flickered and refracted from above. I came up for air on the far side of the pool, and was surprised to see a hawk peering down at me from a copse of young trees across the river. Regal in his regard, he sat like a taj atop the tallest tree, and his eyes drank deeply from all around him. He slowly shifted his gaze back and forth until he locked eyes with me in an unflinching, intense stare. I gave a sharp gasp. And you can imagine my surprise when I heard his voice directly in my mind, as unmistakable and sharp and clarion-clear as the songs of the cardinals that still tumbled down the hillside to the river in waves of overlapping melodies.

“You’re not ok, are you…?” The hawk paused with a glint like a shard of mica in his eye…more an assertion than a question.

“I’m sorry, what?” was all I could stammer back

“I saw you stagger down to the river…crunch, snap, bam, crunch, bam, snap…you humans are so loud you’d wake up a slumbering bear. And your gait is off, something’s up with your left ankle. Hunters always notice even a slight hobble, you know…”

“Umm…yeah, it’s an old injury…usually worse in the mornings…why are you talking to me anyway?”

“Well, this is my valley, and this perch is my favorite in the mornings, and it’s not every day that a human with half a dozen regrets and a few desperate hopes takes a swim in the river. I’m curious who you are and where you’re going…”

I was still a bit in shock at the hawk’s voice in my mind, but I gathered my wits as I bobbed in the cold water.

“Ha. I was hoping you could tell me that. Do you always talk to humans or just the ones who are lost?”

“Are you lost? Seems like a rather subjective designation to me. It depends where you want to go.” The hawk shifted his gaze even deeper into my eyes, if possible.

“I suppose that is the question. Or at least one of the questions…how do I know you’re really talking to me and I’m not just hallucinating?”

“How do you know that anything is real and not just a figment of your imagination? How do you know you’re swimming in the water and not flying in the air?”

“Because I trust my body, I guess. It’s more reliable than my mind.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Between my body and my mind? I don’t know. Probably doesn’t make a difference either way. It’s still about trust.”

The hawk paused for a moment and looked to the horizon.

“You probably can’t see them with your weak human eyes, but those are my friends, Dzo and Tuddy circling up there on the thermals. You’d be smart to gain a little altitude too, zoom out, and let your mind wander into places where you haven’t gone before.”

“Dzo and Tuddy? Who are they, talking hawks who give cryptic advice, like you?”

“No…Dzo is a vulture and Tuddy is a seahawk…and neither of them talk to humans. Kinda a waste of time in most cases. And this isn’t advice. It’s what you know is true but refuse to see. Think of it as the unquestioned, eminently obvious Qi - the life force - that animates both you and me.”

“Oh, so now you rhyme.”

“Only in English…it’s a pretty boring language so you gotta spice it up a bit.”

I snorted. It was a bit galling to have your first conversation with a hawk be full of advice only to have him deny he was giving you advice.

“Gosh, I don’t know what to think now.”

“That’s part of your problem. Too much thinking. Not enough being. If you send a letter through the mail and it doesn’t get delivered to your friend, was the effort in vain?”

“Well, clearly my thoughts would not be shared with my friend, so yeah, it would be pointless.”

“Sometimes thoughts are not meant to be communicated but only to be thought. Though every thought you have is communicated to at least yourself, otherwise it would not be a thought you were aware of. It’s the thoughts you are not aware of…those are the ones you might want to listen for. Those are the ones that might help you decide if you are lost or not. But you only hear those by being. Not thinking.”

The water around me was swirling, soft bubbles danced around my legs. The air was humming with insects and bird song and as the sun started to bleed over the ridge, my mind was suddenly as quiet as a tomb. That’s when it hit me. Not a thought. Not even a feeling or a sensation. More of an undulating, sinuous vibration that flowed through the air and the water and through my body and back out into the water and the air and snaked past the hawk peering down at me from the top of the spruce tree with his eyes still boring deep into mine.

The vibrating wave continued to flow through me and I felt a sense of possibility I hadn’t felt in years. The possibility of existing simply to exist, to observe, to notice, to be connected to all of THIS, to go deep inside myself to find myself in the ultimate act of losing myself to dissolve into the land and the water, and to be content. Nothing to earn, nothing to win, nothing to gain, other than experience and memory and maybe a sore ankle or two along the way.

All of this flowed through me in a few moments and I closed my eyes and took nine deep breaths as the cold water flowed around my goose-bumped arms and legs. I opened my eyes and looked up to find the hawk and he was gone from his perch. I spun around in the water and looked up towards the sky, and as the sun finally crested the top of the ridge in its brilliance I saw him rising on the thermals, circling up and up and up in a corkscrew pattern, wings stiff, wingtips rippling, russet tail feathers backlit in the rising sun.

I clambered out of the pool, lazy rivulets of water streaming down my legs, and laid myself on my back on a flat rock and peered up to the deep blue sky. And without a thought, without a hope, without any expectation or desire or yearning, I greeted the new day, wet and chilly, but maybe a bit wiser.

-- Paul Gulezian