an Emerson-esque outing on a free blue day
I must live on the most beautiful campus in all the world.
This morning for our final requirement in Core we went out to a back-Oakes field and watched one of the teachers fly his falcons. Want to know what makes Nancy happy? The feeling she gets when she's witness to a peregrine falcon taking off over her head, flying out over the trees and the ocean, and swooping back down to eat her breakfast (quail). I was standing about 10 feet from the bird when the teacher was talking about her and I'm still in awe at the closeness of the creature. This is especially magical for me since I grew up basically living and breathing Animorphs, and I've read all about the birds of prey - red-tailed hawks, peregrine falcons, ospreys - so the chance to see one that close was something near miraculous for me. And just that feeling in my chest when she took off - huge and light - nothing less than the grand appreciation for beauty in its most natural form. And it really inspired me to hear what humans were doing to save the endangered falcons. In 1970 there were only two pairs left in the wild. The chemical DDT, which was brought to national attention by Rachel Carson, was biomagnified in the falcons' ecosystems, affecting their ability to produce eggs. The eggshells were so thin that hardly any infant birds ever survived. Fortunately, humans righted their wrong before these magnificent birds were gone forever, by "stealing" the eggs out of the nest, nurturing them and making sure the babies lived, then replacing them in the wild with their parents. I hate to think what would have happened if those miracle workers hadn't intervened. I would never have been able to witness the spectacle I did today. And for you guys - Francis, Rich, whoever you are - who don't care about our diminishing natural environment and the havoc we're wreaking on our mother world, well, what we're doing is destroying beauty. How can you live in a world where there are no peregrine falcons? And how can you not want and try to save them? For those people who think the environmental fight is stupid, I just don't understand. What we're doing is fighting for life and for beauty. Is that not something worth fighting for?
Anyways, Glen the falcon guy first flew his peregrine, Sophie, for the big crowd, and for whoever wanted to stay, he flew his saker falcon named Isaac, which are birds not native to California, but somewhere in Asia. Oh my god was he beautiful. He spread out his wings to show his snow white underbelly speckled with gray and his eyes - those eyes - fierce and penetrating. I savored every little movement he made - a ruffle of the feathers, bob of the head - and just let it seep into my memory. There were only 5 of us there after the 3 classes left, since I guess this falcon was much more of a handful. He was weaned from his mother at 8 weeks, and the trainer said that since he knew he was a bird, he wasn't as compliant all the time to anyone's wishes but his own, so he wouldn't always do what was asked of him. Sophie, on the other hand, was raised in captivity since she was born, so she had no other life to compare hers to. The trainer told us stories about how Isaac, the saker, would just take off some days and fly south all day, with Glen close on his tail. One time he said he found the bird just sitting on the grass in front of the ocean, supposedly watching the sea. I just can't believe how lucky I am to have seen these birds today. And the view on top of that, standing on a hill looking out over the rolling green hills all the way to ocean, the fog line slightly smudging the line between land and sea, with a falcon swooping down over the swaying grasses - can you picture it? Can you feel it? Please tell me you care, because this vision, this feeling, is what I live for.
And you know, I was considering not even watching the second bird fly and just going back to my room or the dining hall, but I'm glad I chose to take a few extra minutes out of my humdrum routine. It was worth it (like it always will be). Just remember.
"Men fall into two classes - those who forget views, and those who remember them, even in small rooms."
-E.M. Forster, Room with a View
This morning for our final requirement in Core we went out to a back-Oakes field and watched one of the teachers fly his falcons. Want to know what makes Nancy happy? The feeling she gets when she's witness to a peregrine falcon taking off over her head, flying out over the trees and the ocean, and swooping back down to eat her breakfast (quail). I was standing about 10 feet from the bird when the teacher was talking about her and I'm still in awe at the closeness of the creature. This is especially magical for me since I grew up basically living and breathing Animorphs, and I've read all about the birds of prey - red-tailed hawks, peregrine falcons, ospreys - so the chance to see one that close was something near miraculous for me. And just that feeling in my chest when she took off - huge and light - nothing less than the grand appreciation for beauty in its most natural form. And it really inspired me to hear what humans were doing to save the endangered falcons. In 1970 there were only two pairs left in the wild. The chemical DDT, which was brought to national attention by Rachel Carson, was biomagnified in the falcons' ecosystems, affecting their ability to produce eggs. The eggshells were so thin that hardly any infant birds ever survived. Fortunately, humans righted their wrong before these magnificent birds were gone forever, by "stealing" the eggs out of the nest, nurturing them and making sure the babies lived, then replacing them in the wild with their parents. I hate to think what would have happened if those miracle workers hadn't intervened. I would never have been able to witness the spectacle I did today. And for you guys - Francis, Rich, whoever you are - who don't care about our diminishing natural environment and the havoc we're wreaking on our mother world, well, what we're doing is destroying beauty. How can you live in a world where there are no peregrine falcons? And how can you not want and try to save them? For those people who think the environmental fight is stupid, I just don't understand. What we're doing is fighting for life and for beauty. Is that not something worth fighting for?
Anyways, Glen the falcon guy first flew his peregrine, Sophie, for the big crowd, and for whoever wanted to stay, he flew his saker falcon named Isaac, which are birds not native to California, but somewhere in Asia. Oh my god was he beautiful. He spread out his wings to show his snow white underbelly speckled with gray and his eyes - those eyes - fierce and penetrating. I savored every little movement he made - a ruffle of the feathers, bob of the head - and just let it seep into my memory. There were only 5 of us there after the 3 classes left, since I guess this falcon was much more of a handful. He was weaned from his mother at 8 weeks, and the trainer said that since he knew he was a bird, he wasn't as compliant all the time to anyone's wishes but his own, so he wouldn't always do what was asked of him. Sophie, on the other hand, was raised in captivity since she was born, so she had no other life to compare hers to. The trainer told us stories about how Isaac, the saker, would just take off some days and fly south all day, with Glen close on his tail. One time he said he found the bird just sitting on the grass in front of the ocean, supposedly watching the sea. I just can't believe how lucky I am to have seen these birds today. And the view on top of that, standing on a hill looking out over the rolling green hills all the way to ocean, the fog line slightly smudging the line between land and sea, with a falcon swooping down over the swaying grasses - can you picture it? Can you feel it? Please tell me you care, because this vision, this feeling, is what I live for.
And you know, I was considering not even watching the second bird fly and just going back to my room or the dining hall, but I'm glad I chose to take a few extra minutes out of my humdrum routine. It was worth it (like it always will be). Just remember.
"Men fall into two classes - those who forget views, and those who remember them, even in small rooms."
-E.M. Forster, Room with a View