I had a wonderful moment yesterday morning down at Lake Parker.
it was one of those “where will you go to” moments, where you pull off the driveway in the darkness but haven’t really set a destination in your mind.
All that I knew as I drove east from my house was that maybe somewhere on the edge of the lake might be a good place to drink my coffee and watch the horizon expose some colors.
I was too early for the north section where the boat launch and pier is, so I drove down along the lake edge to the south side. In fact the first two pics are from the south side of the lake, before I gave up and headed half-way up the edge.
I could have stayed there but something told me to move on from there, that something better awaited me further up the lake.
The rest of the pics at the end of the blog were taken about half-way up the lake’s edge.
So, when I got to the second stop, I pulled in real close to the water and just stood there for a few moments, finishing my coffee and leaning against the car watching the colors form on the horizon.
That’s when I noticed the hawk to my immediate left. To the naked eye, it was still too dark to make much out so while I saw the shape in the tree about twenty or thirty feet away, it was only when he took off that I understood what he was.
I was also distracted by something that moved in the dark near me and jumped into the water just in front of me. I don’t know for sure what it was but it was large, based on the sound of the splash it made.
It could have been an alligator, or a large turtle, or an illegal who had made it over our beloved wall. Who knows.
But the splash not only startled me, it prompted the hawk to take off from his resting spot and I was sad that I might have missed him.
You see, I associate hawks with my Dad and an astonishing number of times, when I have visited with him on a trail or at a lake, I have been greeted by a hawk. So I feel his presence there too.
Anyway, I needn’t have worried, because not only did he stay around for pics (and video even) but he flew so close to me several times, I felt he was saying hello. I spoke to him on a couple of fly-bys but he never answered. I guess he just let his wings do the talking.
So, other than the first two, the rest of the images at the end of the blog were taken there. One of the images is a compiled 12 shots that showed his swoop as he came in close. I was using an ultra-wide lens, so he looks much farther away from me than he really was. At his closest, he came to within 10 feet of me, I would say.
I hope you enjoy.
Anyway, I drove home, pleased as punch. I felt safe in the knowledge that I had all the shots that I needed. And in truth, even if I had screwed them up, I would still have the memory of the visit locked safely away inside my head.
I thought about the little voice in my head that made me go to the lake in the first place. And how again it spoke to me when I needed to move on to that second location.
Obviously, I would have been none the wiser if I had stayed put and missed the hawk. The horizon shots and the colors would likely have been something similar.
But sometimes, it pays to listen to our inner voice.
Especially when like in this instance, there was no other motivation to move from where I was.
Because this is the part of human nature that we don’t really know very well. People refer to it as a “sixth sense” and perhaps they are right.
But in my mind, a sixth sense implies that the voice is coming from without. Whereas I suspect it is coming from within.
Being intuitive is an important skill (or sense) that we seem to have evolved away from. Much like a cat knows when to jump just before someone gets them, when we were cave dwellers, I suspect intuition was an important survival tool for us.
But being removed from the food chain has muffled this inner voice and in general we pay much more heed to our other senses.
It’s the voice that makes us look up when we “feel” someone looking at us. it’s the voice that says “don’t get in the back of the van, with that stranger who is trying to move a sofa with a broken arm”. It’s the voice that tells you not to walk in the dark across the slippery rocks.
Sometimes, we listen and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we avoid becoming victim to a serial killer and sometimes we slip and break our wrist and smash our camera.
We won’t always know when we avoided something by listening to our inner voice, but we often will know when we don’t.
How many times have you said to yourself after doing something “I knew I shouldn’t have done that. I had a feeling it would … ” whatever.
Not listening to your inner voice or over-ruling your gut instinct, is selling yourself short in your decision making. We may not know exactly why, but when we hear the voice or feel the influence, we should at least pause and consider it.
… just a thought.
