Last week, on my drive to work, I was seized by the power of spring. The experience hinged on the up-close sighting of a majestic osprey in a location where I had never seen one before - a place I cruise by at 40 MPH two times a day, five days a week. Fit to burst, I struggled to squeeze the experience into words during my lunch hour. Since that day, spring's wonders have continued to unfold daily in the desert-prairie cusp-land we call home, and that osprey has become my daily companion. Today, I captured the bird on its perch, fish in claw, and in flight. I wanted to share these glimpses of this fierce and lofty creature, who cawed at me and my zoom lens, even causing me to duck at one point, under the impression it was preparing to reward my curiosity with its talons. As accompaniment, I share below my feverish dispatch from the morning of my first encounter with the bird.
Rounding a curve this morning - farm fields to my right, Pecos River to my left - I saw, of all things, a massive osprey out my open window, just 8 feet away, atop a telephone pole on the river-side of the road. Sufjan Stevens’ song “Jacksonville” played in the background...It was a surreal, cinematic moment that swelled with all the migratory restlessness, fecundity, and green-gold fringe of spring. It was as though the road were a fern’s spiral unfolding into bloom as I drove, and at the same time, that the fern’s unfolding was a song, with the osprey as its crescendo. Every morning lately, my drive to work through farm fields on the Eastern edge of the Chihuahan Desert has been punctuated by moments like this. Cinematic moments filled with glimpses of wild creatures (coyotes, hawks, rabbits, and all manner of migratory birds) roaming freely, and perfumed by the smells of the desert coming back to life – grass shoots pushing up through hard ground, pollen-bearing tassels releasing from dry limbs, soil overturned and mixed with pungent manure. I am witnessing the great greening after the browning (of winter) and before the browning (of summer) – the brief excess of green between the desert’s more austere seasonal bookends. No matter where you find yourself, spring – in its time – intoxicates, with its waves of pollen, its infinite resurrections, its nests laden with eggs, its tides of animals and insects crawling, galloping, flying over the earth in search of food, mates, warmth, relief from heat. Spring enchants with its delicate clouds rimmed in silvery light, calls us out of our hibernation by inching up the volume on the Sun’s intensity, stirs our animal natures with the desire to bare skin to sun and touch bare foot to earth. It pummels us delirious with cool, humid wind, inspiring us to come a bit unhinged and sip the silky air like an undiluted spirit. It is good to take note of this fleeting shift, to drink unabashed from it and to be suffused by its promise of newness. Spring is a hopeful season – foolishly so. I drink hungrily of its hope and of its quixotic energy, on the premise that these elements might sustain me through more monotonous and entrenched seasons. I cannot, but want to, capture spring’s essence – squeeze it into a nickel-sized truffle and offer it to you to melt on your tongue, to savor.