Clare Consultation, LLCIn the Presence of a Great Gray Owl
I just sent email to children I met in North Carolina last week. They live in an enormous old house right in the middle of the Smoky Mountains. They run around the house, its sprawling porches and every inch of the generous land that surrounds it. They are learning with every step. They’re kids. Learning and running around is, most naturally, what kids do.
These children have parents who are committed to giving them exposure to a relationship every one of us has – a friendship with the natural world. Over the coming years, the family will be pulling their house back from its history of wear and tear while the thick woods with their grasses and worn mountains rebound season after season into full expression. In all of it, the children will learn.
Between the running and learning, they will ask lots of questions. At ages two, six and eight, their attention to answers is rapt. I watched this the evening we spent in their front room – all of them requesting then listening with undisturbed concentration to every next adult story.
That’s why I thought of them immediately when, day before yesterday, Gary and I were at the end of a hike way out into the Pelican Valley of Yellowstone. It was one of those moments when something extraordinary happens and you know immediately who will be first on the receiving end of the story.
Here’s the way the story went in email.
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Yesterday, Gary and I took time for a long hike way into the Pelican Valley of Yellowstone. Gary had bear spray because it’s major Grizzly country. We didn’t see any of those, but we did hear rumor of wolves and saw lots of Bison – one big bull asleep in his dirt wallow.
At the end of our time, just a mile or so before getting back to the parking lot, we saw the best sight of the day: An enormous Great Gray Owl flew into view and landed on a downed and dead tree – right on the trail and not 50 feet in front of us. For a good 5 minutes, it sat looking at us, looking away, looking back again. Its head moved effortlessly on its neck through each 180 degree turn. Gary whispered to say it was very unusual for the Owl to trust us in that way.
Then, as silently as it had flown in, it flew to the ground. It was even closer to us so we could watch as it took a mouse into its mouth, wrestled with it for a few shakes and then spread its enormous wings to fly away, its fuzzy snack draped out the sides of its beak. Wow!
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Our young friends in North Carolina are future leaders. So is every kid of any age in any family on the globe right now. Leaders are raised by parents and they are raised by community. A wise and powerful part of the community that is very often overlooked is the natural world. Nature and its wilderness raise us, too.
Over recent days, Gary and I have been in conversation with social service professionals, officials in a district attorney’s office, and community organizers interested in how leadership and community wellbeing may be better supported through our relationship with the natural world – the larger community that surrounds and holds up every human society in existence.
These particular discussions are in early phases, and I’ll likely write more about them here. Today, I’m taking my lead from the children running about in the woods and meadows of the North Carolina Smokies. I’m recalling the wonder and attention of my childhood. I’m considering how leadership is stronger when it remembers these early skills.
Wonder and attention. We’ve all got them. But, like I often say, please don’t take my word for it. Check it out for yourself. Then see if you want to join the conversation.
What is a person’s role – a citizen’s role – in relation to the communities and wilderness that raise us?
Hi Mary,
What a wonderful story both about the children and your hike. I am jealous on your sighting of a great gray owl. I have never seen one and hope to this coming year. They sound so magnificent to see, with their large heads and great wings. Thanks for sharing.
tom