Adventure 105 - Bald Eagle

Capture California, the Game-2012

Adventure: 105 – Bald Eagles

Team: Thing One, Thing Two

Date:  July 29, 2012

Location: N37.7.50.06, W118.44.26.13 (Goddard Creek, west of Davis Lakes)

Description:

Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will

or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

Annie Dillard, Pilgram at Tinker Creek, pg 287

(The Annie Dillard Reader)

Sometimes you stumble upon beauty when you are looking for the prosaic. That is what happened to Thing One. We were looking for a good place to cross Goddard Creek without getting our feet wet. We had already spent a long time getting around Davis Lakes and coming down a steep slope to get to the creek. The Cat in the Hat had found a way across but Thing Two was a bit leery of it. So Thing One wandered upstream a little ways.



Out of the corner of his eye, close to the base of a 40' cascade, he saw something big come down at the base of the cascade, on the south side. It looked like it had a 5-6' wing-span and for a a couple of seconds, he thought it was the biggest raven he had every seen, since it looked completely black. But then, Thing One saw his head and it was white. Could it be? Is this a bald eagle. Then he took off and came back down on the north side of the creek. By this time, Thing One was trying to get the eagle focused. But by the time he did, the eagle had completed his fish meal and took off to fly towards the west, leaving Thing One with only a couple blurry pictures of an eagle in flight, with the sun glistening from his body.