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Taking pause in an eagle on a crisp autumn day

TABLE MOUNTAIN — Someone else saw it first.

A guy passing by on the trail, enthusiastic Malamute leading the way, called it out and pointed directly overhead.

"Bald eagle!"

His enthusiasm was almost silly at first. Bald eagles, thankfully, are a common sight in the Northwest, thanks to curbs on pesticides and other pollutants that threatened their existence as recently as three decades ago. You see them in city parks, along shorelines, and, in the winter, in spectacular numbers on local salmon-spawning streams.

The proud birds are prolific in these parts through much of the cool season. Ride the Amtrak train north from Seattle to Vancouver, B.C., in winter months, and you're liable to see more bald eagles than people on the rocky beaches around White Rock.

So there's nothing terribly special in seeing a bald eagle in flight, especially to people who occasionally look up and see one soaring right over their back yard.

But in the outside world, goose-bump memories are all about time, place, setting.

The time was last Sunday, yet another in a string of glorious Indian Summer days we've all been savoring this season. The place was the North Cascades, specifically the spectacular reaches of rock between Mount Baker and Mount Shuksan. And the setting is almost impossible to describe to anyone who hasn't had the good sense or good fortune to stroll Cascade alpine areas in the fall:

Clear skies, with that deep, bottomless azure color you only seem to get in the crisper days of autumn. A stunning palette of color spray-painted on valley walls, as blueberries and other ground-hugging plants turn warm shades of red, blaze orange and yellow, merging into a spectacular butterscotch haze.

And then the sun. As it creeps into the low, southerly place we look for it in winter, the end-of-October rays come at you straight on, face to face, lighting the world in the kind of orange-juice splendor that makes you sincerely wish you had it in you, just once, to paint landscapes.

The autumn light in the Cascades — or the Rockies, or any other favorite mountain range, for that matter — is the stuff of postcards and indelible memories. The shadows are deeper, the highlights higher. It makes you stop, look and linger at scenes you've passed by before without even slowing down.

And when a passing bald eagle flies overhead, the late-afternoon sun lends solar power to backlit tail feathers that look more brilliantly white than any white you've ever seen.

"Look at that," you say to your hiking partner, and, craning her neck, she sees it, too.

No other words are spoken, or necessary. You stand there for a moment that seems much longer, look up and watch the bird hang in the same cool, clean breeze brushing your face. It never flaps; just occasionally dips a wingtip or flutters those gleaming white tail feathers to maintain a lazy circular holding pattern high above reality.

The white is transfixing. It's a kind of white that can't be created by machine, can't be duplicated at Sherwin-Williams, can't even be imagined in any other place.

And then you know: This is why it's so important to get here; get here against all pressures urging otherwise. Especially this year, which, more than any in memory, has been an autumn of endless last chances.

You've said it to yourself a dozen times: Get out now; it might be your last chance. This year, the last chances have kept on coming.

Be thankful for that. But remember that sun isn't a required ingredient in a good fresh-air stew.

You might feel the same natural high gazing at ice crystals in a slow bend of a river, watching snowflakes drift through the trees, seeing raindrops hang from branches, and lying in piles of broadleaf maple leaves thicker than a pillow-top mattress.

It's not about the weather, the wildlife, or even the company.

It's about time, place, setting. It's about getting there to let them all come together and work their own magic deep in a human brain that still yearns, at some level, to tap into this force.

It's about watching the high, aerial dance of a bird you've seen thousands of times, seeing the sun light its tail ablaze, and knowing deep down that it's something you'll never be fortunate enough to drink in, in exactly the same way, again.

It's just one of those moments you know enough to hang onto.

These mountains, that sun, this eagle don't stand a chance against the noise of modern life on their own. But together, they're pure, unstoppable power.

They gave to this fleeting, fresh-air memory the same things all these little adventures give to long lives well-lived.

Context.

This article is republished courtesy of the Seattle Times:
Taking pause in an eagle on a crisp autumn day

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