Wild Delicate Seconds: 29 Wildlife Encounters

Snowy Owls

Snowy Owls 46 Snowy Owls The purpose of evolution, believe it or not, is beauty. —Joseph Brodsky One by one as the afternoon shadows stretched across the winter fields the parliament of snowy owls flew up to sit on the neighboring fence posts.Along the dirt road circling the field,cars were pulled over and spotting scopes set up,thermoses of coffee balanced on hoods like ornaments. Seventeen owls stood in the field or perched on fence posts. They had the attitude of little men, complete and self-contained.Their patience was monumental, as was their posture. Only on rare occasions did they swivel their hunters’ heads or blink their telescoping eyes. Resigned to the vagaries of fate and hopeful about the carelessness of mice, they were waiting out their portion of eternity with exceptional calm. All day the owls hunted in the foot-deep furrows, the tops of their heads showing like errant golf balls. Despite being called a parliament, each kept its own counsel.They would fly from the stands of trees along the edge of the reservoir at dawn and return there in the early evening, or roost far out on the snow-covered ice where distance provided the security they needed. Only then were the day’s achievements discussed and the victories of thought their lonely ruminations had produced put forth for debate. I sat on the hood of my truck with the wind to my back. By six o’clock nearly twenty owls had flown overhead. One landed in the very top of a leafless cottonwood nearby, the late Wild Delicate Seconds 47 afternoon sun highlighting its feathers. Another flew in front of the snow-covered mountains to the east, the steep walls of the 10,000-foot range lighted in pink. Beauty is notorious for being only skin deep. It is widely known to be the sole propriety of the beholder.I’ve even heard it called the hidden reason behind everything, the end-all and be-all of the universe, the very substance of God. If this is the case then Brodsky is right,we are all vehicles for beauty,as well as beauty itself. That day on the way home I picked up a hitchhiker,a large Blackfeet man by the name ofTony Cutfinger.He told me that shortly after the owls arrived, a naming ceremony was held for a local Blackfeet boy.The boy turned four years old that day, my passenger said, and now goes by the name Snowy Owl. ...