Three Ospreys
Funny how you need to re-learn things you already knew.
I’m camping in a dense red-fir forest in the southern Sierra, and I grab a folding stool and my A-style “travel” mandolin and make the short hike through the trees to some nearby granite slabs. The view suddenly appears and is stunning: An ocean of rock; the lake below; the sweeping rise up and east to the highest peaks.
As I sit, three ospreys begin circling above me, banking on the breeze and playing tag… I hear their whistling, chirping calls, coming and going, high above me, while I play along in my own way.
These ospreys’ home is here on the edge—an “ecotone”—between the forest and a sea of unbroken rock. They nest in the fir tops; glide above open miles of polished granite; dive like arrows to the lake. Flying for both fish and fun. A limitless sky arches above. It’s a place of shelter and space. Of safety and soaring. Of both peace and wonder.
But what am I doing here? Can the ospreys make room for me, too?
The red-fir forest is like an ancient cathedral. Towering, stately columns rise from deep, decaying downfall, and it’s all wrapped in silence. Where’s the heart of this world? Inside a circle, an enclosure. Light a small campfire with some dry twigs; add a few squirrel-munched fir cones. The light from the first flames dances on the dusky trunks nearby.
Follow the first curls of smoke up towards the stars. Thinking: “No worries above 5.000 feet.”
And then there’s granite. Smooth slabs of rock, flowing towards the lake below. Rising to the sky beyond. An ocean of glacial polish; grooves and chatter marks; dikes and inclusions. Exfoliating onion layers. Plus erratics—bocce balls of the gods. A world of bright, still mornings, then the crash of afternoon thunder in a stone theater, the booming echoes, and a jagged zip of lightning, with a glowing pop on its end. The startling flash and fear of insight. The seesaw flight of inspiration.
How do you get to the soul of granite? Climb higher.
As I’m hiking back to camp, Peter Gabriel’s ‘Solsbury Hill’ plays in my head: “Grab your things, I’ve come to take you home.” Then I hear Claire Lynch singing ‘Down in the Valley’ and ‘Love Will Find You Again.’
Home is that place where you dream of flying. And up on high you might long to touch back down. Soaring, then settling: Call it an ongoing, internal ecotone. My own instinctual migrations. I need these friends in high places, but maybe I could also line my own nest with some softer things…?
Comings and goings: Summer, then winter, then summer once more; mountains to desert to coast. Lots to learn, misplace, then re-learn…over and over. How to nest. How to fly. Sometimes life is like a chickaree pillillooeeting down a fir trunk. Then it’s still. I guess we can only re-find a home by first losing it.
And maybe the camera shows the way. My images from this trip—or from any trip—form a scrapbook, a storyboard for a script that might still be out there.
It’s a story of three ospreys and two worlds…made one.
By Scott Atkinson
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