Looking Out My Kitchen Window

I have blogged before about the sighing space behind my apartment, a little piece of undeveloped land where all sorts of beings hang out.  Over the last three months, I have spent a great deal more time at home during the day and especially just standing there gazing out over the winter landscape into that patch of woods.

Each season presents a new face to me out there.  Soon it will be dusted with the palest green as things begin to wake up from their winter sleep.  But right now it is still all bare tree limbs.  I like this view because everything that moves back there is so visible without the cover of foliage.  I can see the deers bedded down for naps in the afternoon, squirrels frantically chasing one another across the opposing hillside, birds of all sorts - especially the woodpeckers who will be impossible to spot in a couple months.

So while the coffee steeped, I stood there eyes softly focused.  Not watching.  When a hawk swooped down onto a bare limb.  That caught my full attention.  A big red shouldered hawk distinguished by the strongly barred tail and wing feathers visible as he landed.
(Absolutely stunning photo is by Cary Maures I found on the internet).  Impossible to look away from him, he was just that gorgeous.

But I also noticed that some of the other inhabitants did NOT share my enthusiasm.  The squirrels quickly darted to safety and the sparrows and chickadees flitted silently away from the feeder where they had been happily congregated exchanging their morning avian gossip.  Until he sat perched out there all alone in the sighing space.

My mind meandering while I stood sipping coffee.  Remembering a post from earlier this week about animal helpers or totems if you prefer that terminology (FYI - I find totem carries too much baggage for me but, that's me).  In it I pondered the benefits of a helper like hawk versus one like sparrow.   How we all secretly hope to get the sexy, powerful one and fear finding out that we have cockroach as a helper.  How we are more reluctant to claim small helpers of any kind, or more accurately those we perceive as small/less attractive, than we are to loudly claim those we perceive as large and powerful.  When, in truth, all are equally powerful, just differently abled.  It's like comparing Thor to Ironman.  Both are superheroes.  But each has a completely different skill set.  So that if you needed to go to Asgaard, Ironman would be useless.  And Thor wouldn't help much if you needed someone who could help you invent some cool new technology.  (Smooches TStark)

I know alot of people who embrace hawk as their helper/totem.  Most of them are very much like that red shouldered beauty out in my woods - powerful, but essentially alone.  And I get to thinking about those power totems we claim so readily - bear, eagle, hawk.  Nearly all of them are loners.  There are exceptions - wolf, raven.  That aloneness is simply no choice for me and that makes accepting Sparrow so much easier.