Dad’s car glides down Highway 159 and follows the wide curve through Squaw Creek Wildlife Preserve. We are going to visit Grandma Mabel in Rulo, Nebraska. It is December 25th 1984, our first Christmas without Mom.
To our left, the wooded loess hills advance and recede, forming small grass coves. I tap Dad’s arm and point toward the trees. “Stop! STOP!!” His eyes widen as he, too, sees stark dabs of white and black amid grey trees. He crosses the median and shuts off the engine.
We stare at the trees in silence. Gently, we open the car doors, step carefully toward the barbed-wire fence and stand before them in the cold, entranced. Eagles - dozens of eagles - adorn the semicircle of trees that surround a field.
Casually, silently, one eagle drops, glides across the grass towards us and ascends. A second eagle follows. “Three, four, five, six…” The steam of my breath rises. I whisper a number for each eagle as it joins the spiral of black dashes and white dots rotating upward into the azure sky.
Nearly forty. It seems unlikely when I say it now, but on Christmas Day my father and I watched nearly forty eagles rise toward the heavens like smoke - then disappear. It was our miracle. It was our gift.
Because they follow large migrations of waterfowl, it would be rare to see “a convocation of eagles” in Parkville. Still, if you are watchful, during the coldest months you will probably see an eagle or two perched on a twisted oak branch above our river trail, in grey tree lines across the river from Parkville, or west of the Broadway extension toward downtown Kansas City.
Eagles are your gift, as simple and elegant as black and white.
Happy Holidays!
