During the summer of 1972, before I began my senior year of high school, I had several encounters with birds that made an impression on my adolescent brain. Like all teenagers I was floundering my way towards a sense of where I fit, wondering how to take my raw material out into the world and form it into an adult. At various times that year it seemed the universe was speaking to me through the voice of a marbled godwit, a great blue heron, a group of pelicans and particularly through the harsh cry of a red tailed hawk.

Early that summer my task for the day was to get a fence ready for the cattle we would soon put out in the pasture just west of my prairie restoration. I threw some metal line posts, some used wire for splicing, a bag of staples, a post maul, a fence stretcher and a few tools into the back of our old pickup. I packed a sandwich or two and a quart jar of water and left for a day of fencing.

While I wasn’t a lazy kid, neither was I an efficient and driven worker at sixteen. After two or three hours I lost interest in the fencing, dropped my tools back in the pickup, and decided to take my lunch on a walk to Anderson Lake, about a half mile to the west. I ate a sandwich as I walked, first crossing our prairie hayland, then jumping the fence bordering a neighbor’s pasture. I crossed a couple hills and came upon a view of a valley heading down to the lake. Bordering the lake a hundred yards ahead was a large dead cottonwood with a nest in the crotch between the last two sizable branches, about 40 feet in the air. As I approached it a large hawk lifted off the nest, screamed at me and flew into the sky until it became a line drawing, and then little more than a dot. It turned in swirls and spirals, still screaming from perhaps 1000 feet in the air, “SKREE! SKREE! SKREE!”

There was only one choice available to the young man I was at sixteen. I had to climb the tree to see what was in the nest. What else could I do? It is only with hindsight that it seems obvious that climbing 40 feet up the slippery surface of a barkless cottonwood with an angry hawk parent voicing its indignation up above might not be a good idea. A different way to state this might be that I was compelled to climb the tree by a teenager’s need for excitement and novelty, the need to explore and learn In any case, there was no hesitation as I attacked the tree.

At that age I was an accomplished and experienced tree climber, but I found the cottonwood a challenge. Without bark there were no grooves to stick my fingers or the toe of my boots into for purchase. I had to get to the first branch, almost ten feet in the air with the smooth, slick trunk below. I was finally able to reach the branch by using a bump from a long gone limb as an aid, From there I found more good branches to use, until I was about ten feet below the nest. The only branches at that height were both small and beginning to rot. It would take both skill and daring to complete the climb to the nest.

But what then? I needed to take a minute to think this through. Why was I so determined to reach this nest? The previous year I had climbed to a hawk nest in a box elder in an old farmsite north of our place. As I rose through a tangle of branches to the lip of the nest I met the open gapes of three halfgrown hawks pretending to be badasses by hissing and screaming at me. In my surprise I lost my grip, but caught myself in the tangle of branches a few feet down, The only penalty for my foolishness was a momentary loss of dignity and a few scratches. The penalty of losing my grip on the cottonwood would be far greater. And above the hawk still screamed.

After thinking through the options I decided to retreat. It wasn’t so much a “discretion is the better part of valor” decision as a realization that I was acting like a damned idiot. If I fell I could be badly hurt, perhaps killed. Worse, no one would even think to look for me here, a half mile from my pickup. A mental image of committing to a jump to a rotten branch which snapped in my hands, with me ending up falling through space convinced me to start my way back down. A few minutes later I was on the ground ready to go back to fencing. I gave a last look to the hawk still circling far above and began to saunter back, probably a bit smug in my new found maturity. After I was fifty yards away from the nest the hawks screams seemed louder, so I looked back up to watch it gliding back to earth in a tight spiral, no longer a line drawing, but the image of a raptor. As I watched it circle downwards the realization crept up that it was not circling the nest, but directly over me.

Holy Crap! Normally I don’t spook easily, but I instantly received a very large dose of fear induced adrenaline. I had watched hawks dive on rabbits and mice from the safety of a tractor many times. There would be very little time to react should my aggrieved adversary decide to dive on me. With the strength of my fear I began to sprint, trying to put distance between the nest and me. Though I was running with the speed of youth, I felt like my boots were caked with cement. At the same time, I was yelling at the hawk, professing both innocence and contrition, not caring that true innocence precludes the need for contrition. When I had reached the top of the hill where I had first seen the nest I looked up to see the hawk break off its intimidating spiral, gliding back to the nest where it sat and screamed its final indignation towards me: “SKREE! SKREE! SKREE!”

I walked a ways farther and then dropped to the ground, deflated like a spent balloon, the adrenaline wearing off. My heartbeat became less of a machine gun and I thought about what had just occurred. Never before or since have I been frightened in that primal manner, though I have been in several situations much more dangerous. I felt that life had given me a powerful message.

The message was to be mindful; to be intentional; to show respect for the decisions I made. It was to look at the world as a place to enter and be a part of, not a toy to manipulate. The opportunity to retool my outlook can only be called “grace” by this old Catholic altar boy. I tend towards linear thought and cold logic, and can be a bit dismissive of mystical interpretations of events. My wife is the shaman in our family, not me. Yet it pleases me to imagine that in a moment of heightened consciousness, fed by fear, I entered the fierce, unyielding world of a red tailed hawk. To the hawk, the world and every action is serious, with life and death consequences. I am humbly grateful for that lesson.