There’s something about hawks. It’s the way they look perched atop a tree or a pole, surveying the World below. Nothing small is safe if it’s on their radar screen. So I’m glad to be a pretty big guy sitting in my chair at the edge of the porch of the Canyon house watching an enormous hawk, peering from his perch on the power pole across the canyon at the surrounding oaks on the North side of the ridge, and the yucca and prickly pear cactus on the South side of the ridge. The Canyon house is on the North side of the ridge and you can’t see the Southside. It’s fun to scramble up the steep terrain on the North side, in the shade of the oaks, each step emitting a resounding crunch of a million or so leaves. Once there, you can look back down on the Canyon house to the North and the Pacific Ocean and Santa Barbara to the South.

It still gets me how the ocean is South when you’re in this area, because of the way the peninsula juts out of the coastline of California. To watch the sunrise from Quelin Rocks (first you have to get out of bed :)) you have to kind of scooch to your left and observe its magnificence as it rises up from behind the Santa Ynez Mountains. And of course if you’re still sitting there at sunset (get a life) you scooch to your right to watch its golden glow slowly disappear into the hills to the West, casting a trail of flickering golden light across the Santa Barbara Channel.

So I’m lucky enough to have brought my binoculars out to the porch this beautiful morning and I’m watching this hawk on the pole across the canyon. His eyes are beady and piercing. Though I respect his top of the food chain presence, I find myself kind of rooting for that squirrel at the base of a huge oak tree, burying his acorn in a place that hopefully he’ll remember when winter comes (we don’t exactly get drifting snow at Windermere in the winter, but hey). “Look up little squirrel!” I plead. I look down to grab my phone camera so I can get a good picture (not of the hawk eating the squirrel – c’mon, this is Windermere). I pick it up and turn back to the hawk. But, he’s gone. Vanished! The squirrel has vanished too, but I think he checked in with his visceral instincts, and scrambled into his home, safely deep in the earth.

I look up and there’s the hawk, way up in the blue sky. I guess the pole wasn’t high enough. Whatever. Then he lets out this incredible screech that seems to split the sky in half, and another hawk appears. The two of them circle one another, and a couple more screeches tell me that he’s just wandered into a singles bar and he’s turned on his, you know, hawk charm. What do you tell two hawks in love? Get a tree?

To think all this drama and somewhat accurate accounting of my experience with the hawk(s) took place in about five minutes. On the porch. Of the Canyon house. At Windermere. Just another (somewhat) peaceful few moments in a place I love. The innocence of the land is so powerful to me. It’s like the land just says, “Do your thing humans. I’ll be here. But if you want to talk, I’m here to listen. Just be patient though, if you will. Peace usually walks with stealth and strength, and before you realize it, it consumes your heart and changes you a bit. Or a lot. I have that magic and it’s yours if you choose. So, please bless me as you already have, by being here with good thoughts and prayers. I feel them. For now, then, let’s be one and help each other to be the bearers of peace for all those to come. I am Windermere. Let the beauty of my heart transcend into a consciousness. And let the beauty of your heart share us both with the World.”

Baruch Bashan,
Dave Wright

Dave and Mary Wright’s Windermere Photos