Walk with a painter

Approximately 30+ years ago, while teaching a watercolor class at one of our local art clubs, one of my students brought in several reference magazines as source material for her paintings. The natural world images in those Audubon magazines were the most jaw-dropping I’d ever seen and, after leafing through several issues, my life took a dramatic turn. I had always been an avid fisherman, which I still did to some degree, but it wasn’t long after that I sold most of my fishing equipment in order to purchase a good 35mm Canon camera with a number of lenses and other gadgets! I then enrolled in a home study course in ornithology offered by Cornell University and soon joined the local chapter of the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania. Whew! This was getting to be a whirlwind romance with my new found interest of bird watching in my backyard. Eventually, the name of Hawk Mountain surfaced, which I had never heard of prior to this, and after researching the history found myself late one September Friday night tooling eastward on the Pennsylvania Turnpike with three other guys from work bound for Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in the eastern part of the state. We checked in late at one of the local motels and were up early Saturday morning to make our way to the visitor’s center for orientation and then proceeded up to the spectacular North Lookout. The entire staff at the sanctuary was still flipping out over the sightings that took place two days earlier when well over 22,000 broadwing hawks were counted over Hawk Mountain! I was hooked! We still watched quite a few raptors “kettling” during the next two days as they made their way south on their migratory route. Hawk Mountain Sanctuary is one of the best places in the northeastern United States to watch the annual hawk migration, one of nature’s greatest wildlife spectacles. Between August 15 and December 15, an average of 20,000 hawks, eagles and falcons pass the Sanctuary’s North Lookout. This was the first of my two trips there and after purchasing the book on the incredible, and bloody, history of Hawk Mountain, I was inspired to try my hand at a bit of poetry which I’m publishing here for the first time since writing it so long ago. You really need to know the history of what actually took place up there to understand this poem so off to the bookseller with ye!

Hawk Mountain

A puff. Then two. Then six and more. Echoes off the valley floor. Guns that spent their deadly shot have long been stilled. Except for not. The random fool who makes his will on those who fly above the hill. But now a speck. Then two. Then six and more! Beating fast through autumn’s door! With quickened pulse and thankful eye we glass the ever darkening sky. For promises kept and secrets hid they now can see we did. We did. Kettles north! Kettles east! Boiling up like brewer’s yeast. Riding waves of thickened air as if on some atmospheric stair. They climb to heights where few would dare. With inner map and vision clear they stay the course from year to year. And give to us the loyal few a chance to watch these wings anew.