Seven Minutes in Heaven
I wake and grab my cellphone from atop the jumbo pack of toilet paper. The time is 6:20.
We are on a rock ledge in the deep of winter in the blue of daybreak. From nowhere we are enveloped in the sound of wings. Birds, numerous like starlings, rush by in a fast flock, but they're not starlings; they're bald eagles. Solitary hunters forgoing solitude. "It can't be," I say. Then, "Where's my camera?" I bend backward to look where I left it behind a granite boulder. An eagle has come down to play with it, flipping it over with his talons, beating against it with his softest feathers. He can go ahead and break it. How could I capture this?
Descending the ledge in a few steep steps we follow the flock to a wide field. The snow is deep and reflects both sunlight from the just as yet unrisen sun and moonlight from the low, retiring moon. Across the way are a man and a women, both in military uniforms. Hers is the tan of some foreign air force, his is Canadian navy blue. Both are ceremonial dress heavy with medals of high rank and hard-earned experience. They are counting backwards from three with laughter in their voices. At "one" he picks her up and spins her in his arms. A whirl of sparkling snow, dislodged when her feet left the earth, falls magically around them. They shouldn't be fraternizing in uniform, but it is hard to argue with magic snow, an adoring flock of eagles flying circles around their love, and now a crowd of deer and dogs running the same.
It is then that nature gives its ultimate approval. Six bellowing grizzlies join the fray and two fat swans kicking up snow with their flat feet. The woman calls to me, "Come, come! They love the moonlight. They'll go when its gone." And I know the whole of what she means. They'll go back to their ways, to being predator and prey. The eagles will hunt alone. The deer will run from the dogs. The captain will file papers in the office on his ship. There is only now to play.
I wake and search the sheets for my cellphone. The time is 6:27.