How often do we adults envy the boundless energy that children possess? While we sit over our coffee and conversations, the youngest among us frolic and play as if there were no tomorrow and as if energy grew, like the euphemistic money, on trees. They leap and tumble and run and chase and cavort, sprinkling their actions with laughter of the sort that erupts from small children spontaneously and un-self-consciously.
At this stage of my life, I am no longer often privy to this type of delight, this “I get tired just watching them” sort of event. And when I do, I realize that parenthood is indeed for the young, for shepherding enthusiastic and energetic children takes patience and resilience and a sort of physical stamina that diminishes with age. As grandparents and great-grandparents, we may indeed be more patient. But we no longer have the bottomless stores of energy that we can tap into when two or more little ones decide to cut loose. And as rarely as I witness this nowadays, when it does happen, I am again reminded of the hope that lives in our little folk and one of which they are blissfully unaware.
I saw it the other day when I least expected it, as a small group of youngsters played like this, unbridled and uninhibited, with not a care in the world. Only this wasn’t children in the sense that we humans normally understand the term to mean, but a small flock of young crows playing with a young Cooper’s hawk. And it has been nothing short of delightful to watch this drama unfold as the summer has progressed.
The hawk and the crows appear at about sunrise and start flying around, landing on the ground, on low branches, or on fences, pausing momentarily before they dash off again, climbing, dipping, and turning in a sort of aeronautical dance that only birds are capable of. Bored with that, they splash around for awhile in rain puddles before taking to the air once again in their exuberance.
Their choreography is astounding, and both species seem to posses the same level of agility combined with a rough sort of gracefulness. As they cavort, the crows emit low rasping calls, and the hawk mimics them. Or is it the hawk emitting the low rasp and the crows mimicking it? It’s hard to tell, they’re all moving so fast and seeming to have such fun doing it.
Then, before I know it, it’s over. All the birds disappear, their energy spent, for now at least. They’ll be back some time in the afternoon before the sun drops behind the trees and will be at it again, shouting and shrieking like the children they are. I wonder where their parents are at times…or maybe they’re all on their own now, having been sent out into the avian world to fend for themselves, which here, in this urban place, requires a willingness to coexist with all sorts of other species, including that strangest of all that moves about on two legs and seems to fare quite nicely without feathers. I wonder sometimes if birds ever wonder about us as much as we do about them … if they consider what it must feel like to be earthbound and able to fly only with the help of cumbersome hunks of metal that are miraculously capable of making use of the very same air currents that birds do, albeit with a much greater expenditure of energy of a different sort.
What must it feel like to be able to rise above the earth, latch on to the wind, and climb or swoop or soar, to be able to alight effortlessly high up in a tree or on a steep precipice and view the world and what transpires on it from that vantage point, to trust the wind enough to let it carry you and guide your journeys far and near?
I’ll never know. But this I do know. Lately, I haven’t had to go very far to see some of the most wonderful things. Not many days go by that I don’t look out my front door and see something fascinating or hear something alluring that I absolutely must investigate. It’s heartening to know that there are still places like this not far from urbanity, where wildness hasn’t yet relinquished its hold and where there will always be something to hear, to see, to love.
Right now, it’s a small flock of crows hanging around with a young hawk. Who knows what’ll come next, as nature continues to bring many of her marvels almost right to my front door.
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