I had gone to the beauty shop, my first excursion unaccompanied unless you count the cane and the oxygen tank as "company." (I must admit I have come to think of them as my BF's.) Rocky was napping when I got home and the house seemed so quiet. I walked into the guest bedroom and looked out the window which I often do when I feel pensive. I love to stand there and look at my woodland garden which is what I call my old rock garden since it has grown lush with hostas, azaleas, ferns, and some wild flowers we brought in from the woods.
I hadn't been there long when something in the sky caught my eye. Remember, we are at an elevation of 3000 feet here on the top of a "saddle" or a "bridge" in the middle of a bowl shaped valley, small though that valley may be. Growing up the sides of the "saddle" or "bridge" are primarily hickory and oak trees with an occasional dogwood, redbud, and Virginia pine sprinkled in, and lots of underbrush. The tops of those big trees are not all that much higher than our two-storey house.
I realized that what I was looking at was a huge bird with its wings spread wide riding the air currents. I'm always mistaking buzzards for some more rare bird, but this didn't flap around like a buzzard. And I couldn't see a bit of red on a tail as I thought maybe it was the red-tailed hawk which frequents the area. And this bird was huge, and I could see its wing span was wider than any bird I had ever seen! And then I saw the white head and the shape of the head was, without a doubt, AN EAGLE!
I wanted to run for the camera! But if I did, the bird would probably be gone by the time I found it and clicked it on and aimed! I didn't want to miss a bit of this thrill, so I just stood staring at it circling, circling, circling moving slightly away from me and the house with each circle until it had moved out of sight. "OhmiGod, ohmiGod, ohhhhh," was all I could say and my heart thrilled and filled with the words I would use to tell Rocky what I had seen.
I feel the visit of the eagle is some kind of omen. I just don't know the meaning. What I'm thinking now is that it/she/he came to remind Rocky and me that all is o.k. if the eagles are back (they released some a decade ago in the Smoky Mountains, and more recently, on Holsten Lake, which is just over the knobs from us.) All is o.k., Mother Nature is working her ways, and when the inevitable happens to the Rockwells, the eagles will be there for us.
Note: I did not take these photos. These are from Google's Picasa photo site that Picasa users have generously uploaded for use by the Google community. The photo of the flying eagle looks exactly like my experience two weeks ago.
