Annie's Falcon

Ann’s Falcon

18 "There are three things that are too amazing for me,
four that I do not understand:

19 the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a snake on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
and the way of a man with a maiden.

Proverbs 30; 18-19

Tomorrow, at 3:30, some of Ann’s loved ones will gather at Remember the Maine Park, a county park just outside of Vernal, kept up by the local Lions Club. The park is at the base of a tremendous sandstone cliff, I’m guessing about 400 feet almost straight up. On the cliff are two painted inscriptions next to a giant painted American flag. The inscriptions exhort passersby to “Remember the Maine” and “Remember Pearl Harbor”. Decades ago, painters dangled precariously from ropes, hundreds of feet up, to create them. The cliff is a beautiful tan, burnt to a rust red in some places, and streaked with dark brown “tiger stripes”. It will serve, to me anyway, as a giant memorial stone for Ann.

In the grassy park below it, I will open a little cage, and a young male kestrel (“sparrow hawk”) will fly away.

I don’t want to reach too far for an over-hyped metaphor. I don’t want to be glib about Annie’s life or death. It may be true that when our loved ones die, that they experience a release and a freedom that is very like the flight of a hawk. Some of us may take comfort in the thought that Ann is watching us, like a falcon hovering high in the sky. But I don’t honestly know where Ann is or what she experiences anymore, and I am not going to speculate. I assume she is with God, and that would be indescribable by definition.

But I think that the love that these people have for Annie has bound us together, and this last ritual will help us remember. Every time I drive by Remember the Maine, I expect I’ll think of her. When I see a falcon in flight, perhaps it will remind me of her. And in thinking of her, maybe I will attempt again to be more compassionate and loving towards those of us left behind by her death. I will try to remember her cheeriness, and what it was like to be hugged by her. As well as the times she became angry with me, and in fact all the parts of the complex person she was. I don’t want her to become a little tin angel in my memories; I want to remember her as the real woman she was in life, with all that includes.

I do think that she would approve of us remembering her and honoring her with this event. One of her deepest convictions was that we humans had an obligation to care for our non-human kinfolk, as God’s creatures worthy of dignity and love. This little falcon was injured, and rather than write it off, and just euthanize it, Denise has helped it to heal, so we can return it to wild freedom. We are intervening in the life of this little creature, on its behalf, as Ann and the UROMP “dog people” did when they have attempted to rescue cats and dogs from pain and death. By doing this, we are showing a compassion that is quite beyond this little bird’s ability to comprehend. That’s how I see it, anyway.

Aldo Leopold wrote a little treatise called “On a Monument to the Pigeon”, a chapter in the book A Sand County Almanac. It was about the extinct passenger pigeon, and people’s regret at the death of a whole species. He wrote, “To love what was is a new thing under the sun, unknown to most people and to all pigeons. … In this fact…lies objective evidence of our superiority over the beasts.” In a similar way, we love what was, when we remember Ann’s sojourn on Earth.

A kestrel is a good animal to compare to Ann. Like her, they are diminutive but powerful little beasts, dapper, tidy, fast, self-confident. Fierce when it is called for. I could carry the analogy too far, but I can’t think of a better bird to represent her. I will send it forth with my blessing on it’s little feathered head. May it find a mate, and raise up many fledglings to carry on its line. And though I will not confuse the bird with the woman, I am sure that I will never look at kestrels the same way after tomorrow.

Love always,

Tom