[mou] The year of the Owl

[Alt, Mark]

My life this winter is full of owls. The year has progressed and I
landed in a unique role, reporting on the status of the Owls. It started
with reports of a dozen Hawk Owls in Sax-Zim. I went to see them. I
reported on them. That trip I saw the Black Great Gray Owl, on Munger
Shaw Road, I got it on film. I was excited that day, to see so many Owls
and then to see one so different, what a day! The Great Black Owl. Ben
Yokel saw it again, then it was gone like a puff of black smoke. I
remember its sooty blackness, the only contrast were the yellow eyes of
a wolf glaring from its flattened face. I watch the video over and over,
4 seconds in duration, as jumpy and out of focus as a Bigfoot tape; it
turns and flies into the woods, spreading its pinions, wheeling to float
into the trees.=20
The video did not capture the eyes, its head turned from when I saw it
as we backed up. It flew. I looked into its eyes from 12 feet away and I
saw it look back. Nebulosa is its species name, it means misty or
cloudy.  There are all kinds of clouds, and this one was as dark as
midnight fog, dark as a wall cloud in July, dark as a cloud of smoke
from a raging fire of tires.  Perhaps it migrated Southward, is
well-fed, it may even be dead. It may be sitting somewhere, dark as
Pennsylvania coal, no one seeing it, an even darker hole in the darkness
around it.
 Great Gray Owls are working hard to survive this winter, and an image
is burned into my psyche, an image of the dark Owl.  What haunts me is
the apocalyptic nature of this irruption, so many owls suffering so
much, their great journey, their exodus bringing them so much pain and
bleakness. The blackness of the Owl seems to define the blackness of
their prospects, underfed not even halfway to spring. Perhaps I need to
find a Snowy Owl to restore balance, to see the brightness of its
plumage, this time white with yellow eyes, to try and make a difference.
Maybe to make a difference I can find these Owls breeding this spring or
summer, to find renewal in nature, to find the circle of life still
intact. What seems cataclysmic to me some will say is nature at work,
and I understand this from a scientific point of view, but my feelings
are deeper than that. I have worked to find Owls and look for their next
moves, where they can be found, how they behave, report on them, as have
many people involved in this year of the Owl. I am going to go next
Saturday and hang nest boxes on the North Shore with Bill Lane, to try
and make a difference for some Boreal Owls. Perhaps it will make a
difference for me, as well.=20

Mark Alt=20
Brooklyn Center, MN=20
mark.alt@bestbuy.com=20
"I recalled that I had read somewhere that in the Middle Ages Hell was
envisioned as a place without birds." Jim Harrison=20