A Glimpse of Something Wild

In Wildness is the preservation of the world. - Henry David Thoreau

The few weeks between semesters is a great time for picture-taking on campus. When things are relatively deserted, it's easier to get clear, uncluttered shots of campus itself. Spring semester classes don't begin until Monday, so there are just a few days of empty-campus time left.

It was a snowy day, cold (about 10 degrees F in the morning, maybe 15 to 20 degrees in the afternoon), and even a bit windy at times. With several inches of snow forecast, I decided to take the bus to work. I usually get off the first bus behind the Libraries and catch a second bus to my workplace. I frequently seize the opportunity to use the time between buses for taking photos around central campus. Same deal on the way home.

And so it was that late afternoon found me on campus, heading back to my bus for home, just as the snow began to clear out and the skies turned blue. I had just walked through a group of arts buildings and was photographing a row of cool trees near the education buildings, when I saw a cream and grayish-tan swoop of wings! Yowza! A really BIG bird! My first impression was: OWL! But on second glance, I realized it was no owl, but a hawk.

The hawk sat on a tree limb by Chambers building, then flew to a branch of a second tree, where it peered down and all around at the ground, no doubt scoping out its dinner. It flew from there to the roof of Chambers, then away to the high branches of a pine or fir tree nearby, where it disappeared.

Throughout the whole two minutes that I watched it (and yes, that's how quick the sighting was!), I quickly snapped away on the camera. I wanted a good, clear shot and my camera's super-zoom is very capable, but I didn't have a tripod. So I wiped the snow off the top of a fence rail, took off my glove and laid it on top of the rail, kneeled on my knee in the snow, and balanced my camera atop the rail for a steadier shot.

This is not, by the way, the first time I have spotted hawks on campus. I have occasionally seen them hanging around the duck pond. And there was that one time, a few days before Thanksgiving, when campus was deserted and I had the best hawk sighting of my life in between the science lab buildings. But so far, this sighting was the second-best!

After the hawk left, I looked more closely at a tree near where it had first landed. I spotted a very cold squirrel huddled up, its fluffy gray tail wrapped around it like a fabulous fur coat, at the base of a branch. I don't know if that was what the hawk was considering having for dinner, but on this day, the squirrel was left to escape. I hope the hawk found a warm meal somewhere else on this cold, cold day.

Before I end this tale, I want to say something about how it made me feel, this unexpected encounter with something wild. Now, you know that I am a child of the outdoors and the sunlight and the open sky. So wild spaces are places of special enchantment for me. But I GO there expecting wildness.

The big difference was that I was on campus, in a place that is generally pretty civilized. The University is more "town" than "wild," in my opinion. And into my civilized, known world flew something completely wild and free and unexpected. To see it appear in this well-known space and then disappear filled my heart with glee. It gave my spirit . . . wings.

The song to accompany this image of a wild hawk is the Troggs, with Wild Thing. Wild thing, you make my heart sing. You make everything . . . groovy. (And as a cool little P.S., here's an interesting trivia note: the person who wrote the song Wild Thing is Chip Taylor, brother of the American actor Jon Voight.)