Finding eagles

Feb. 25, 2010

Dear Patty,

DC awoke me with an offer no one could resist, even early on a Saturday morning: "Want to go see some eagles?"

Yeah.

When DC asks a question like that, the unspoken words "right now" are understood. Unbathed and unshaven, I pointed the car east across the Mississippi River and then south about 15 miles to a swampy conservation area called Horseshoe Lake. Someone had told DC about seeing eagles there.

Horseshoe Lake is shallow, shaped like its namesake and dotted on its surface with bald cypress. In the summer it's populated primarily by mosquitoes and water moccasins and fishermen. An estimated 150,000 Canada geese and 15 bald eagles winter there.

Driving the roads around the lake, we quickly spotted a huge nest atop one of the cypress trees in the middle of the lake. It had to belong to an eagle, but none could be seen. We drove all the way around the 20 miles of shoreline, up and down Promised Land Road, and walked the hiking and biking trail without seeing another sign of an eagle.

Honking from graceful V's of geese overhead echoed across the otherwise silent lake from time to time. The bushes along the lake shone red in the sun. DC said it's the sap beginning to rise in them.

I was long overdue for a cup of coffee by the time we returned to the car. DC wanted to make one more trip around the lake before leaving. She'd brought her new video camera and needed to use it. As I drove absently along the east side of the lake, DC suddenly commanded, "Stop!" Two bald eagles occupied adjacent leafless trees 50 yards off the road. They simply sat motionless atop the trees, but they were magnificent.

As DC positioned her tripod, a great vortex of flapping signaled that one of the eagles was leaving. The other eagle stayed, and DC filmed for minutes before it, too, rose out of the tree and began flying across the lake. As we looked up to watch we saw four more eagles circling high above our heads.

The sky was swimming in eagles.

In his book "The Souls of Animals," Gary Kowalski writes about the creatures that dream and dance and love and share this world with us. They are neither human nor things, but they are spiritual beings as certainly as we are, says Kowalski, who is a minister.

"It is through faith -- not the faith of creeds or dogmas, but the simple 'animal faith' of resting in communion with each other and with the natural world of soil and sunlight -- that we touch the divine," he writes.

Eagles aren't DC's only video project at the moment. She's already preparing for Castorfest, her family's annual summer reunion at their cabin on the Castor River. This year will be special because the clan's two great-grandchildren will be in from San Diego.

Everyone, probably even toddlers, is required to give a performance on the final night of Castorfest. DC usually does something third-degree dangerous with fireworks, but this year she has decided to use her camera. The film, as yet untitled, will be shot from our dog Hank's perspective.

Hank is a furry black ball of anxiety who doesn't like to be held, sort of a George Costanza with canine teeth. We wonder what life is like for him down there. Is it all just knees and trespassers at the door, running dreams next to warm radiators and daring leaps on and off the couch? Oh, and unconditional love.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.