I’m sitting on the balcany of my family’s nearly deserted cabin in a hidden valley. My feet are propped up on the railing, and I’m enjoy a paperback. It is dusk and the sun is beginning to leave the hidden valley with one last show of it’s brilliance–electric hues blaze through the clouds. I hear a low who and glance up. It takes me moment, but in the distance I spot a brown owl perched in the branches of a nearby cottonwood. His call is sweet and unearthly, with a quiet confidence. I am awestruck. I quickly locate my camera, and trek through the high grass of the field toward the tree. I approach cautiously, snapping pictures all the while. He is up rather high and his back is to me, but I notice the “ears” that mark his breed. And when he swivels his head to view his stalker, his face holds the typical authoratative look of Great Horned Owls. Please, I think, maginificent creature–just let me get a closer look.

I get this one last look until a gunshot sounds in the distance, and I behold the most wonderful sight of all: he unfolds his massive wings, lifts off, and flaps them rhymically into the sunset. I stand in amazement while the swish  of his mighty wings rings in my head.

That night, as I slept under the stars on the balcony, I vaguely remember hearing him who quietly before I drifted off to his world.