The Cleanse

It sure was a pretty picture.

The light hit the water, shining with an un-wintery gleam. Framed by pines dressed in snow coats, geese lazed along. An eagle perched on the high branch of a low tree. Feathers rustled, a stir.

A crowd of onlookers milled, just a handful of early morning nature lovers with cameras angled up. Bated breath and still limbs. You could taste the quiet excitement like a crisp, fresh snow. Simple and sweet.

“He’s gonna poop!” cried the woman in her Steelers hat as she hastily maneuvered the shadow box in place.

With a lazy stretch of the wings, the bird let it rip as a quick, steady stream of excrement shot onto the branches below. The bald eagle’s neck and shoulders craned upward, as if the right positioning would offer the best feel. Nature’s splendor.

Eager clicks snapped as early risers sought to record the money shot – the moment last Sunday as the holiday weekend came to a memorable close.

Baldie yawned again on the branch. He craned his neck back and side to side with the confidence only afforded to beings so powerful, their lunch makes the cover of National Geographic and so majestic, their waste makes a morning’s entertainment.

And to think some people don’t enjoy bird watching.

I’d like to tell you I take in the sight of the national bird with appropriate pomp and awe, humming Taps under my breath. I’m more chagrined to say the episode struck me almost as much as the clear, sharp beauty of that stretch of beach below the entrance to Higgens Point in winter.

True naturalist I, I focused on the glorious moment between the first lazy, self-assured yawn in the sun and the second. Sun, preen, and fire. A mid-morning delight.

But hey, it brings people together. Strangers become friends as the national bird suns, preens, and relieves.

It was a true North Idaho moment, too. Locals and routine visitors – the kind who come back annually to visit family and friends – bonded instantly over a shared love of nature, especially its not so pretty underside. You’d be hard pressed not to be moved, if not over the nation’s bird demonstrating the cycle of life (and the cycle of digestion) then by the poetry of it. Strangers sharing common ground, a frozen one, with reasonable distancing, at a time when tensions are high and public bonding at a low.

Though personally, I like the metaphor of a majestic bald eagle leisurely taking a dump, thoroughly ridding himself of all the crap. Ready for tastier fish to come his way.

They say in fiction that rain is your prime imagery for cleanses and new beginnings. I’d say it’s this.