This morning I got up early to go on a shopping expedition to Rhinelander, a city about an hour away. (Your concepts of what is a reasonable to distance to drive to go shopping and of what exactly constitutes a “city” change quickly when you live in such an isolated area. Driving an hour each way to pick up some stuff for your apartment begins to seem completely normal, and a town of less than eight thousand people feels like a busy metropolis.) As I drove down the country highway at what seemed to me to be a perfectly reasonable speed, one person after another zipped around me, doing sixty-five, seventy, seventy-five miles an hour. What was the rush? Were they late to church? I found it rather annoying.
Then I came around a bend to see a car pulled over onto the shoulder of the road next to an overgrown field. Some sixth sense tingled and I immediately became convinced they’d stopped to look at wildlife. Sure enough, when I slowed down I spotted a bald eagle in full adult plumage standing on the ground and eating something not far at all from the road’s edge.
Did I stop? No. I suppose in the end I too fell prey to the jaded, “I’ve-seen-dozens-of-bald-eagles-before-and-I-don’t-even-have-my-camera-and-I-have-errands-to-run” way of thinking. But it made me immensely happy to know that, in the rush of people hurrying to get through the wilderness separating one of these far-flung North Woods towns from another, someone felt that a bald eagle was reason to come to a complete standstill.
Pictures from Lake Superior and the Porcupine mountains coming this week…
In wildness is the salvation of the world — Thoreau. In stopping beside the road to look at the bald eagle, a piece of the world just might be saved. I have never seen a bald eagle in the wild; golden eagles, yes. We have them that soar overhead from Possum Kingdom Lake, about thirty miles away. I have to say, Rebecca, knowing that you are studying ecology and educational approaches to instructing it, I am envious in a good sense. Looking back on my academic career, I have become satisfied — in part — by being an historian and teaching anthropology. I would study ecology and anthropology if I could repeat. Ecology is a field that needs to be a core requirement in secondary and higher education. It is a sanctum that, in my judgement, not even religion can touch, for it shows the web of life as it is: connected and evolutionary with empirical evidence. Your wrote a very good post that showed wildness and your feelings.
I’m surprised to hear you’ve never seen a bald eagle, but then, I suppose there isn’t much habitat for them in your part of the country. My first good look at a golden eagle came on my trip through Colorado this summer.
I have missed the bald eagle in Colorado sightings and I have never been to the Great Lakes and northward. I do want to see them wild. One day it will happen.
Even people who never take an interest in nature will smile when they see a Bald Eagle. I love that!
What’s funny is that truly hardcore birders rarely bother with bald eagles, now that they’ve become so common in some areas. A real, serious birder would be squinting through his binoculars at a sparrow while a bald eagle soared around his head in circles.
I like the fact that your sixth sense kicked in. I am due a Bald Eagle sighing. Happy you got one!
I really like Jack’s comment.
Isn’t it funny how sometimes you just KNOW there’s something interesting to see?