When I go out specifically to see birds, I will often go out in the morning without having eaten and spend a few hours or more wandering in marshes or meadows, along creeks or the shore of the Lake. I have noticed that hunger of this order helps to sharpen alertness while firmly easing me out of the self-focused state I so easily slip into. It brings me a useful diffusion of thought as the body starts to pay more strict attention and the mind freely drifts. Somewhat in line with the spiritual and religious uses of fasting, this bodily hunger helps me to understand an existential hunger as well. We all have a need for something, however ill-defined which will sustain our spirit, calm us and help to move us through our lives. In the way that most of us live, it is easy to feel distracted or disconnected from the world around us-- out of place, without roots and restless. When I go out into the natural world to see birds, there is the physical reconnection with the natural world but there is also the act of encountering another life that is in place, deeply rooted in the world around it and at rest in that, no matter how much it worries about predators and finding food, it is not struggling against itself-- the bird simply exists in its natural state.
For me, hawks most clearly express this idea in that they create a deep resonance within me. Something in the back of my mind responds automatically-- an inner compass pulled to and shivering towards its object. Owing to a few lovely conversations in which I displayed my own inelegance with the spoken word, I have been trying to understand and become more able to express this connection.
First these are fairly measured, elegant birds living under a well-defined, vigilant tension. There is to them a kind of feral constancy which I mean in the sense of steadiness of temperament but which is also pleasantly tied to notions of faithfulness, loyalty, and love. My own name is derived from Gawain, the name of a knight of the round table which is most closely thought to mean "Hawk of May". This speaks to the nobility that has tended to be attached to hawks because of their well-controlled bearing but also hints at the fierceness and violence with which they hunt. Our words for these animals mostly tend to focus on this violence with the word "hawk" coming from roots meaning "to seize" from which has also grown the word havoc. "Falx" is Latin for sickle, with it's own attendant associations with reaping and death, and came to refer to
sickle-shaped weapons which morphed into "falcon". "Raptor", only fairly lately applied to birds, means "robber or plunderer" and comes from the root "rapere" which means "to seize and carry off" and unfortunately is closely related to "rape". But it is also closely related to rapt and rapture which maybe makes it an apt name in that it points out the odd mix in which these birds have been viewed throughout Western thought. At times, they have been associated with royalty and virtue,
used in heraldry and as symbols across cultures. And then they have also been
shot and
killed as
vermin as they prey on livestock, poultry, and game-- hated simply for hunger and a will to live.
I have
written before about "seeing the bird in two ways" and it is difficult to dissociate the actual birds that you see before you with the resonance they have for us, the associations we feel that give rise to these names and symbols-- these metaphors. Metaphor is what we use to reach out and try to grasp something that we either cannot directly express or directly understand. It is our way of seizing an idea, to carry it away, take it apart and digest
what sustains our lives, what then becomes a part of us. Metaphor, in art, spirituality, and thought, is a way in which we sustain ourselves and are able to feed that existential hunger and find connection with things which we cannot fully understand.
Metaphors can be seen as a guiding pattern or constellation-- something by which we orient ourselves in a complex world. The most
important part of a constellation is the point of observation, or the
location of the viewer themselves. If your point of view is changed, then the entire
constellation is different. Astronomy in this simple way is deeply rooted
in place while yearning for farther reaches and in this way shares
territory with spiritual faith. This speaks to the importance of knowing where we are and the significance of our place in the world while also illustrating the versatility of metaphor across mental disciplines.
Hawks can be seen symbolically as spirits of the forest and open field, a representative gestalt of the natural world itself. As birds they can point us toward an expression of everything which soars within us and, as raptors, those emotions and ideas waiting to seize us. As with most things, close observation of their lives can help us to recognize patterns and contours in our own. They are there for a reason, both in a biological and a metaphorical sense, as all things are in the natural world and that reason is fully their own. They are in place, simply and strongly connected with the world around them.
There is then Wendell Berry's idea, of which I have
written before, where one can understand the world as "a music so subtle and vast no ear hears it except in fragments". The metaphor is aptly made as we use music to give voice to that which we find difficult to give words. It takes so many things all joined together, moving sometimes in harmony and sometimes in discord, to make up even the tiniest beauty which we see in the world around us. It is my belief that by loving this world well and connecting with it, we come to recognize our place in it and to know what is ours to add to this vast music.
These hawks, these avian hunters and seekers, help me to connect with this music of the world. They help me to understand and remedy this inner hunger. They help me to read these constellations and to find my place.
