I took the back roads home from a school run the other day. They had been recently plowed, but still I drove slowly. The nor’easter had dumped snow over a landscape already devastated by the hurricane. Downed trees still littered the sides of the road, shrouded now in white. Rounds of wood lay haphazardly around every turn, where men had to clear giant trunks in a hurry. Most of the power lines were up, attached to new poles set by utility companies from as far away as Quebec and Washington State. Some lines still sagged low in places over the road, streamers of yellow caution tape waving off drivers. Connecticut is choked with trees, soaked in water. The ground is so soggy in places that trees have shallow root systems. Sandy’s breath just toppled these behemoths over, crashing them onto houses, roads, wherever they fell. The sounds of the storm that day were powerful. We could hear creaking and cracking as gusts tore through our woods. Branches bent over, whistling in alarm as they tried to hold onto their leaves.
Ten days after the hurricane hit a nor’easter arrived, blowing hard, but nothing like Sandy. It blanketed us in snow. When the wind died there was an absence of sound. Snow acted as a muffler. After the fierce noise of the hurricane the silence was peaceful. I couldn’t help thinking how beautiful the snow was as it fell in big fat flakes, even though I knew it was compounding problems for those already suffering. This second storm covered in a clean white sheet the mess of leaves and trees and branches strewn everywhere, like kids hiding their dirty clothes under the bed. Mother nature may be violent and destructive, but she is capable of great beauty. The snow felt like an apology.
On a slow curve I saw the owl. It was sitting on a branch of a tree right at the edge of the road. I passed before I thought to stop, but I turned around as soon as I could. I couldn’t see it on the way back. I thought it had flown. I turned around again and went more slowly, and then I spotted it. I stopped the car in the road, fumbling for my phone to take a picture. I was a little ahead of the tree now and looked up through the sun roof. The owl peered down at me, perfectly still, his feathers fluffed up around his neck in the cold air. As he saw my hand come up he gave me a disappointed look. I could almost hear him sigh in disgust before lifting himself up and away in flight. I drove the rest of the way home slightly ashamed.
It took me a day or two to figure out that the owl was a message, one that I failed to sense at the time. It was a gift to be able to see an owl so close up, so unruffled by my car going back and forth, by me stopping right under its tree. It was only when I tried to capture the image superficially that he fled. How often do we sabotage those beautiful moments by trying to reproduce them? Art is one thing, but missing the point is another. I believe that owls are sacred. That they hold ancient wisdom. And to see one is rare. Social conditioning dictated my reaction, obliterating the connection to mother nature that I was being offered. The storms had altered my compass.
My mother loved owls at one time. I think she felt the power of their silence. But she voiced her feelings and people started giving her owls as gifts. I remember a collection of them. They disappeared one day and when I asked where they had gone she said, “I don’t want them anymore. I don’t like tchotchke.” Owls had become objectified to her and so lost their magic. In our addiction to technology, our need for two dimensional reproductions of everything, as if without the image the moment didn’t happen, we have trivialized magic. If I hadn’t reached for my phone, what would the owl have said?
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