Of hawks and meadowhawks and...

The past few days we've seen a couple of large, beautiful hawks soaring over the fields behind the house. We haven't yet got a close enough look to identify any of the raptors that are visiting. The first sighting was when a very large hawk made a couple of threatening passes at a smaller one perched in an oak tree at the far property line, more than 100 yards away. It is the time of year for hawk migration to be underway. We've not been back to hawk ridge in Duluth for several years, so we can't speak to whether their chart has changed, although we suspect not much, if at all.

Hawk Ridge Migration Timing

Photo by J. Harrington

Another kind of "hawk," the ruby meadowhawk dragonfly, has also been showing up more frequently over the past few days than we saw them over the peak of Summer. That name seems like it should belong to a character in a Louise Erdrich novel, doesn't it? With the end of Summer reduction in mosquitos and deer flies, we're not sure what's left for any remaining dragonflies to feast on.

ruby meadowhawk dragonfly

Photo by J. Harrington

Last, but far from least, our own "hawk eyes" managed to find a couple of resources on the internet that, if read, you might find encouraging and, possibly, even a source of hope. We'll be reading them more than once over the next several months, because they help to nicely frame many of the concerns that are troubling us these days. Each of these contains fundamental concepts that more of us should be intimately familiar with, we believe, and hope you'll agree.

• R. Buckminster Fuller's Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, and


• Donella Meadows Harvesting One Hundredfold: Key Concepts and Case Studies in Environmental Education

Evening Hawk

By Robert Penn Warren

From plane of light to plane, wings dipping through 

Geometries and orchids that the sunset builds, 

Out of the peak's black angularity of shadow, riding 

The last tumultuous avalanche of 

Light above pines and the guttural gorge, 

The hawk comes. 

His wing 

Scythes down another day, his motion  

Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear 

The crashless fall of stalks of Time. 

The head of each stalk is heavy with the gold of our error. 

Look! Look! he is climbing the last light 

Who knows neither Time nor error, and under 

Whose eye, unforgiving, the world, unforgiven, swings 

Into shadow. 

Long now, 

The last thrush is still, the last bat 

Now cruises in his sharp hieroglyphics. His wisdom 

Is ancient, too, and immense. The star 

Is steady, like Plato, over the mountain. 

If there were no wind we might, we think, hear 

The earth grind on its axis, or history 

Drip in darkness like a leaking pipe in the cellar.

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