Dead Man's Creek- March 18th, 2012

                                                                                  

      Sometimes it seems like the world comes to you.  I decided to stop at the creek near Washoe Lake at the spur of the moment and it ended up being one of the most deeply memorable experiences I've had. It was getting late and intermittently the snow would gently fall though it wasn't too cold.  I saw some Say's Phoebes briefly at the start of the trail which was a first for me.  Heading up the trail there was the familiar feeling of a gentle loneliness that I get when I'm outdoors that sometimes allows you to fool yourself into thinking that things are happening just for you.  I walked down a path through the thin band of dormant trees lining the creek into a clearing and there was a Great Horned Owl perched in the magic hour sun.  I'm not an accomplished enough photographer to convey that light onto the photograph much less to make it convey the feeling of what it's like to be alone watching the eyes of a beautiful predator in the last brittle golden light coming over the mountains.  It brings you to the forefront of your mind so hyper-attentive that you almost connect with the animal, feeling its hunger and anticipation of a night of hunting and trying to will yourself silent and motionless as you feel its unease at your own presence.  To feel at once how this bird must terrify a mouse in the night and also an echo of the submerged fear that the bird feels towards you.  Eventually some movement I made overcame his tolerance and he flew down deeper into the thicket of willows.

     I tried to circle around up the creek to find him again and as I did I heard a call that sounded something like a monkeyish chicken and began to look for what was making it.  When I got too close, the Cooper's Hawk that had been calling flew out of the willows and landed on a tall dead tree.  I was able to get to a vantage point just quick enough to get a few magic pictures (to me if no one else) of his red eyes burning with the hunt or with agitation at me as the snow glided down around him.  Fierce and restless, in a matter of seconds he was gone from the small valley.

       I crossed the creek and came back down to look for the Owl again and just happened to look over into the trees and see camouflaged there, eye-level and within 5 feet of me, a small Long-eared Owl, a species I had never seen before.  I moved too quick in raising the camera and he flew down the valley into a thicker stand of willows.  I tried to keep in mind where I thought he had landed and came down the other side of the creek and saw the Great Horned Owl again perched low in a small clearing.  I took some pictures of him puffed up and looking satisfied and comfortable but quickly went to pursue the smaller owl.  I crossed back over the creek through the original clearing where I had stood watching the owl earlier and came down the other side of the willows.  I saw him fly before I got a view of him then I continued down so far that I had mostly given up on seeing the little owl when there he was, perched along the tangled willow border and staring intently at me.  Slowly, I took some photos and edged a little closer.  His eyes widened and burned maybe with fear or maybe with anger at my trespassing on his territory and then he was gone.  I felt bad then for having invaded the world of these creatures, so beautiful as to haunt me.  It is difficult to reconcile this desire to follow --as if in pursuit of some deep, hidden current of life and knowledge just outside the borders of your own-- with the desire to remove yourself from this dwindling world that belongs to others, to preserve this mystery untouched and whole and safe from everything, to wish that trails had never been made and that this secret other world would always remain so and only known to you through the regions of your heart and mind that subtly bear the memory of a time when your kind still wholly belonged there.  It is hard sometimes to feel the fear and agitation you stir in the places where you wish you could remain and to feel the damage that you have done to the peace around you.  It makes you think of your own relief at being alone and of the fear which raptors radiate to all the smaller ones around them and you start to feel as if you know something of the life of another.