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Outside Magazine February 2004
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Natural Acts
Birds on a Wire (cont.)

As the light turned amber in mid-September and the nights turned crisp in that sublime change of season that makes people wistful, Sonny was still showing up at the nest. The Missoula Osprey had finished their season with the league's fourth-best record, and the rookies had flown home to Caracas and Tokyo. The first ducks and geese were heading south along the flyway. And I was thinking of that Sandy Denny song: "Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving / But how can they know it's time for them to go?"

Apparently, Sonny didn't know.

"Go," I shouted one morning after a storm had turned the sky the color of a bruise. "You can't stay here."

That afternoon I took Clara to the river for a swim. The shadow cast by a chevron of geese passed before us. And then the shadow of Sonny. Although I was glad he was leaving and looked forward to seeing him again in the spring of 2004, I already missed him, and immediately fell into a postpartum funk. Now what would I do with my days?

But here was lesson number three: I might not know how to live, but they do. When it's too hot, they head north; when it's too cold, they head south. And it's the simple things that matter most: family, good food, and flying high.
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