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The Bird Too Fierce To Exist
Bald eagles and the freedom of being temporary
The first eagle of the season is always an event
They never really go away. Not completely. Some of them live here year-round. But the majority head north for the summer, to pull fish from rich Alaskan streams. When the weather starts to get cold, they head back down here, to Vancouver and the valley behind it, timing their arrival with the salmon run.
It’s as sure a sign of the end of summer as the leaves changing color and the mournful honking of the geese heading south. The sudden white flame of a head in a tall tree, the dark outstretched wings that look impossibly big among the panicking crows. They look like something too fierce to exist, like dragons or dinosaurs. And they sweep even into the city like the spirit of the wilderness itself, carrying with them the smell of winter and ice and decay.
I like the eagles. I feel an affection for them that their calculating raptor hearts can’t return. Maybe because they only exist here, in North America. Because when I first moved here, almost exactly 18 years ago, they were a constant reminder of the completely different world I found myself in.
It wasn’t just the city that surrounded me that was different from the English town I grew up in. It wasn’t just the…
