In Search of the Expected and Not Finding It

Copyright 2005 Renee Prince

All Rights Reserved.

 The Hawk Diaries

When a friend goes missing, you have start your search,

even if you don't know where to begin. 

In Search of the Expected and Not Finding It

March 1, 2005           

It was just an insane little nagging pipedream.  But with every day that Tennerin didn't come back, with every day that I heard him calling plaintively from somewhere across the river when I fed Chocolate, the insistence of the feeling that I had to go and look for him increased.  Even though it wasn’t hunting season, some jerks had been shooting in the woods across the river for days, right in the area where I could hear Ten calling.  Had one of their shots wounded him?

Why was his call so different?  Instead of the happy, fierce-wild “scree!” he used normally, this call was long and low, down turning at the end so that it was really more like a crying sound…  It all made so me so uncomfortable a week into Tennerin’s absence that I could not stand it anymore.  I felt like I was being driven out of the house and into my truck, gripped by some crazy obsession.  I couldn’t stop myself from driving off to make what was in reality a bizarre and surely hopeless journey to the no-man’s land across the river.  Even as I waited impatiently at the stop sign on River Road I thought to myself that this was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever done, at least sober.

I drove all the way downtown, about seven miles, took the Salem bridge over to the west side of the river and then faced the fact that I had no idea of where along this stretch of town I could find a road into the land near the river itself.  Safeway stores, video rentals, McDonald’s, a House of Pies, thousands of suburb houses stretched away toward my right, blocking any sight of the now distant banks of the Willamette.  I drove along for a few miles wondering if I was anywhere close to the area where our house would be across the river.  No side streets looked promising after an aborted trip to a small park ended with me still in sight of the downtown bridge.

I knew the house had to be at least 7 miles downriver from there, so I got back onto the highway.  Then I saw a street called River Bend.  Could I believe the sign?  Salem, sitting in a valley almost two hours inland had at least two streets called “Sea View”.  I turned down the hill and after the houses dwindled away found myself among rolling fields interspersed with stands of thick, skeleton-bare trees.  At the far end of the road, it teed off and I saw that the gravel pit was at the head of the ‘T’.  I could hear the gravel pit sometimes from our house across the river, and it seemed like it was maybe a mile upstream from the house.  Or maybe sounds carrying over water were deceptive.  Hadn’t I read that somewhere?  Actually, what sort of self-deception made me think I could even guess about the mile thing?  I had no idea how far the gravel pit was from home.

I turned left at the ‘T’.  Now heavy woods riddled with overgrown swamp and hidden fields ran along my right.  Somewhere in there was the river.  Was it a mile through the woods to the Willamette?  A half mile?  There were no landmarks I could see, not even the herons’ nests, which stick out like gigantic dark balls of yarn at the very tops of the tallest trees near the shoreline.  If I couldn’t see them, I could be anywhere.  Well, I supposed ‘anywhere’ was a good a place to begin.  I might as well just choose spots at random.  I had decided to wear my usual outfit I threw on when meeting with Tennerin at home so that he might recognize me more easily.  Ha ha, as if he would see me in this non-stop canopy of wall-to-wall undergrowth and close-knit trees.

Unfortunately, my usual outfit was a long black duster coat and wide-brimmed dark hat with knee-high boots and a huge set of binoculars dangling from my neck.  I looked like an escapee from The Matrix, not a popular look out here I assumed, as I was now in what looked like the land of John-Boy Walton and family.  There were only a few ramshackle human habitations, but I could be seen from one of them wherever I decided to get out of the truck and venture forth.

My worst intruder paranoia was confirmed at the first stop when I had gone no more than a few feet into the woods, passing a bullet-ridden (the gun-toting jerks at work?) “No Trespassing” sign.  As if I had tripped an alarm, two dogs from a fenced-in farmyard burst into frenzied barking at me, interspersed with choking growls of loud and obvious rage.  I tried to ignore them, I really did.  For nearly three minutes, I continued into the increasingly overgrown and swampy area ahead of me.  The barks rose in pitch and intensity until I was afraid I would give the damn dogs a stroke if I didn’t get out of their territory.

I skulked back to the truck as fast and casually as I could, thinking of reasons (not the real ones, of course, for that would prove to others how insane I was) I could give to the suspicious farmers with guns I was surely about to encounter.  Lost children? Dog? Lost giant wild raptor that might be gunshot?  Luckily, I was spared the tissue of lies when the area proved to be deserted by all but the apoplectic canines.

The road dead-ended, and I turned back, planning more sorties into the bush along the return route. The next two attempts to penetrate the forest met with a fence-like wall of blood-sucking brambles---dead but still dangerously barbed blackberry bushes from warmer days long ago.  One more try at a place that I had noticed on the way in, a faint game trail that descended into some sort of quagmire.  At least the stagnant water and rotting mud had killed off all the blackberry bushes.  By the time I had gone perhaps a half mile in, I still saw no sign of a river.

  This was it.  What else could I do to find my missing hawk friend?  I opened my mouth and tried not to hold back from embarrassment as I yelled “Tennerin!”  Once.  As I was debating whether I should call again, I heard his “Scree!” just above me and saw him flying past me looking directly down at where I was standing.  How he had seen me through the heavy netting of tree branches, I couldn’t guess.  All I caught of him was a brief glimpse through a tiny opening in the trees.

“Tennerin!” I called again.  “Scree!” And he was back again, giving me a penetrating look and then purposefully heading out toward where I had come from.  Maybe he had seen my truck and was trying to lead me back there, in the open, I thought.  Wasn’t I giving this hawk an awful lot of credit?  Maybe… But how had he found me in all that miles-long stretch of woods?  How had he appeared almost instantaneously the first time I called him?  How could this really be happening?

            I finally pushed my way out of the woods and got to my truck, covered with scratches and sweating profusely because I was wearing a heavy winter coat and it was almost in the 70’s.  No sign of Tennerin.  Was that actually Tennerin I had just seen?  He had that brilliant roseate breast, and he had seemingly screamed back to me when I called him.  Even so, it was just too--- well, just too unexpected.  I had embarked on what I knew was an impossible quest, getting out of the truck to search almost at random, completely without bearings, looking for a wild hawk that had no reason to show up.  Yet Tennerin had found me within thirty seconds after the first time I called his name.

I started the truck and began to drive back down the road toward home.  A few hundred feet later, I spotted him sitting on a maple tree next to the side of the road.  It was getting dark, but it seemed to be Tennerin.

“Are you Tennerin?”  I asked.

“Scree!” the hawk instantly answered.

“Where have you been all this time?”

“ Scree!”

“I missed you very much.  Are you coming back to my side of the river?”

“Scree!”

And so on, a conversation between the hawk and me as darkness fell.  He answered every question or comment I had at the appropriate interval, sitting calmly and looking me in the eye.   Never had any hawk, including Tennerin, “talked” directly to me in this way.  It simply did not fit the reality I had left the house believing in.  He had found me in all the deep, impenetrable woods, and now he was telling me things, and answering my questions.

If I had been more open to this exchange, less in shock at the bizarreness of it, could I have understood exactly what he was saying to me?  I had the distinct, embarrassing impression that I had underestimated his powers and overestimated my own.  However, overriding it all was my grateful relief to know he was alive and unhurt.  I left him with an only slightly self-conscious statement of my feelings.

“I love you Tennerin.”

“Scree!” he answered.  And the meeting was over.

I felt as if I had entered another world that side of the river.  Reality was a deep and magic thing, unfolding in a strange, yet meaningful meeting with a creature very different from the one I had expected.  Today, on this side of the river he was more than what I had so far conceived of as a “bird”.  The results of my search today will likely change the potential of all birds for me from now on. 

                                                    RCP

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