Eye of the Eagle, 30X

(Bald Eagle)

I would love to have known the Eagle’s perspective on this story, but I’ll do my best to tell it. The scene is set many years ago during my second year of teaching, 1969. Both good days and bad stand out in memory like accented notes I whistle along my road. Enter Owen, a seventh grader, fidgeting with prepubescent energy.

Owen stood maybe four and a half feet tall. He was very bright and cute as a button—but you knew he was one of those buttons that could pop off at the slightest provocation. On this particular cold February day, I had taken my classes on a field trip to Pere Marquette State Park, which occupies acres of rich bottomland along the Illinois River. The main attraction of the trip was finding wintering Bald Eagles—rare in this location at the time—sitting on ice flows in the river, gliding above in search of food, or sunning atop some leafless tree.

There was a favorite perch that was always the object of whatever stealth I could muster among my group of 40 or so 12- and 13-year-olds. Carrying a tripod-mounted spotting scope, I planned to lead my troop to a halt before startling the eagle, which I hoped would be at home that day. With luck, each kid would get to peer through the scope at 30x for their first up-close view of the North American treasure. 

As I had hoped, the bird was comfortably perched 10-15 feet above a very muddy road that crossed a field of soy beans. As I helped one of the kids adjust the scope, I became aware that the button had popped. There was Owen, merrily crossing the field, each of his feet collecting pounds of melting, oozing, sticky mud as he trudged ahead. Focused entirely on the accumulating mud, he was unaware that the rest of us had stopped. He didn’t see the Eagle. The Eagle, however, saw him.

Owen didn’t look up until the bird, only a few yards away, dropped from its limb. I think it was the “whoosh” of its wings as they opened to catch the air, making their first powerful downward sweep and launching him upward that first alerted Owen. Left behind on the other side of the field, his classmates and I could hear Owen’s gasp of amazement as he stared up. The bird was only a foot or two above his head with its 6-to-7-foot wingspan fully extended—awesome from my perspective, but probably terrifying from Owen’s. As his head came up, following the soaring Eagle, Owen lost his balance and fell over backwards, splatting noisily in that sticky layer of Illinois ooze. 

As I caught up to him and helped him escape the mud, our eyes met. There really wasn’t anything to say, but we shared a chuckle that still resonates with me today and, I hope, with Owen, wherever he may be.