Blog 51 The Hawk Comes Home to Die (Gary)

There are little saplings everywhere here on Gurian’s land, and I am listening to the creek.  Again why do I cry here?  Now I look at the meadow and I cry some more.  It is tall green grass and a forest of trees just beyond.  But why do I cry?  It feels so sweet; I have missed it.  My heart hungers for this so much my head cannot know.  A white butterfly wings past.  My heart seems to sing behind it until it disappears.  The wind opens the trees to more sun, and it feels for a moment as if I am in heaven.  The sweat lodge is fifty feet away.  Perhaps I am home again. 

            Michael tells me this is where the hawk came to die a couple weeks ago.  Mike was coming to his meditation spot on the creek, and this old beat up hawk didn't move from his spot only a few feet away.  The next day Mike saw him sitting in front of the mountain house, and in the morning he was dead.  He had come here to die.  It is a good spot to die, or die into, as we all will or could.

            Butterflies continue to visit and the sound of the creek is soothing.  This is similar to the place I grew up, years before I started my walks in the clouds.  It was there on logging roads that I hiked and became lost in marshy creeks with skunk cabbage abounding.  And water skippers who hopped around in the water.  This was where I learned to explore and hike.  My friend and I would go to the war surplus store to get our gear.  Our packs were WWII vintage.  My brother did the same but his were WWI vintage.  Ah, the smell of the fresh cut trees from the lumber camp, and the smell of the chain saw oil.  You could smell it from a distance.  I realize more than ever why my hikes in the hills of Los Gatos mean so much to me.  Even fighting off the flies in the hot sun brings me back—back home.  This is a respite.

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