The Vision Quest

It was one of those days today... An all too uncommon day, where you meet someone unexpectedly that helps distort and shift perceptions - a day with events as catalyst to re-evaluate and re-tool definitions of self, the world - and what is possible...

I was tasked with helping a young woman realize her "vision" and convey her to possible locations to view an eagle in the wild... We had four hours. I think I had seen one bald eagle since moving here 9 months ago. I admit, I was a bit intimidated by this challenge...

While enduring recovery post-operation, and dealing with the new challenges of an extremely rare disease that can bring visions, she saw an eagle. An eagle with mountains as backdrop. In this vision this place was connected to her road to recovery, a healing dream... After researching photos she realized this stretch of Rockies matched what she thought she had seen from the hospital bed...This brought her from 2,000 miles away to Boulder, a place she had not been.

We drove east, with views of the Rockies at our backs... I really think she had called birds to her. 10 minutes out of Boulder, on Arapaho bouldevard, a huge golden eagle swooped skyward and across the path of the vehicle. But it was the bald eagle of her vision...

I could only imagine what this young woman was enduring internally - its like your body has been taken over by some new unknown being, not me she confided... Yet her smile and positivity were infectious. I never would have known.

As we drove to the end of the road at Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge she was thrilled with the tangle of deer in tall grass, the chirping scatter of prairie dogs, the effortless soaring of red tails and ferruginous hawks... But still, there were no bald eagles...

At the locked gate we could go no further. I parked. I climbed on top of the van with the camera and the zoom lens. I think she spotted it first. A large nest in the cottonwoods several hundred yards north. No sign of birds though. I snapped an image of the nest at full zoom. I climbed down the ladder to show the screen to her. We magnified the image of the nest. Peeking into the blue, beyond the edge of the latticed sticks, was a distinct white feathered head.  The bald eagle was sitting on her eggs...