It was the bewitching hour. The hour before dark, when the Empress-Sun lights the sky, outlining each puff, strand, and wave of clouds with her lavender, silver, and yellow highlighters. Each night, she sets the stage and calls in her subjects to see her fall. She had called me to watch her cross the crimson horizon, to see past the earth into the cosmos, to know that our world is just a finite piece of infinity.
I was on a hike, just outside the city. I needed a reprieve from news clips showing masked men carrying guns, smashing windows and doors, pepper-spraying protesters, and shooting people on our streets. I needed to walk under tall trees and across grassy meadows. I needed to hear the birds and smell pine needles and dirt. I needed to be alone.
I lay back in grasses flattened by wind and snow on a hillside meadow that separated two stands of trees and watched the clouds drift on wind currents across the sky. I breathed deeply, grateful to be away from the chaos of the city, even if for just a little while. But my reprieve was short. Darkness was descending. I needed to go back to my car.
As my feet went clop, clop, clop on the frozen dirt trail that dipped back into the trees, my isolation in the forest made me nervous. I no longer felt comforted by the quiet and wondered if anyone else was in the woods. More accurately, I worried there might be a man lurking in the trees. I have heard one too many stories of bad things that can happen to a woman who is alone at night.
“WHEEeeeeK”..............WEEEeeeeK,” rang out from the trees below me. I was relieved the screech didn’t sound human. Was it a cougar? A bird?
My pocket expert, the Merlin app on my phone, informed me that the noise came from a Great Horned Owl. I was surprised. Previously, I had only heard their softer calls, their melodic:
“Whoo, who, who, who, Whoo.”
These owls with their yellow eyes, tufted ears, and sharp, curved beaks were waking up. They were calling out to one another and announcing to all the creatures in the forest that it was hunting time. Their shrieks warned the skunks, rabbits, and mice that it was the witching hour, the time to pay attention and stay close to their hiding spots.
I stepped off the trail, set my backpack behind a tall ponderosa pine, and tiptoed towards the noise. My footsteps went whoooof, whooof as they sank into a thick bed of pine needles–sounds loud enough to alert the owls. I saw what looked like two gruff old men with bushy eyebrows drop from a tree in front of me. Their wings made no noise as they twisted through the trees towards the clearing. I was worried about men, and the owls were worried about me.
Then, from the same tree, another “WEEeeK.......... WEEeeK” rang out across the hills. In a tangle of bare branches and brown clumps of pine needles, my eye caught movement. Focusing here, I spotted another owl: stout and long. He was perched with his back to me.
He bobbed his head up and down and then tipped it side to side, moving like a saucy teenager dancing to the beat of a favorite song. Then, he rotated his head all the way backward and looked directly at me. I felt unimportant under his gaze, just a curiosity in the trees.
“WhhEEEEK” I heard from the trees across the clearing. A deeper scream. And then another. The owl in front of me tipped his head, danced a little longer, let out a final wail, and pushed off from the tree limb. I heard his wings flap before he disappeared into the night.
I crept up the hill through the trees to the trail and walked towards the parking lot. I was relieved when I got to my car, but still grateful I had come to the woods. The Empress-Sun and the owls reminded me that we are but a speck in the universe. Our lives matter, but we are not all there is.
1. First published at annieallenstories@substack.com where Liz Melville posts some of her writing.
2. After reading the notes at the end of Stacey O'Brien's book, Wesley the Owl, I will be more cognizant of when I go owl watching. She states, "Owls are nocturnal and hunt at night. Their most important hunting hour is the first hour after sundown, so they should especially not be disturbed for any reason during this time. Owl watchers should time their walks for after midnight to give owls time to acquire enough food for the night. Also, humans should avoid even touching the trunk of a tree containing an owl: racoons, curious about human scent, will climb the tree and kill the owl. Playing tapes of owl calls can interfere with the owls' ability to breed and raise young, sometimes entirely stopping all breeding in an area."
