{"id":3694,"date":"2018-03-06T07:14:25","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T15:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=3694"},"modified":"2020-06-22T12:12:18","modified_gmt":"2020-06-22T19:12:18","slug":"bald-eagle-splattering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/bald-eagle-splattering\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bald Eagle Splattering"},"content":{"rendered":"

I crested the dune and gazed south a half mile down to the beach, to the driftwood fort under my construction for the last month. I had worked on it at least a dozen times and erected a dozen spars to give it a striking appearance from a distance.<\/p>\n

High tide was closing in and the ocean battered the jetty. No one was around.<\/p>\n

Something atop the fort caught my eye. It was a small, somewhat rectangular mass. At first, I thought it was a float I had previously attached to the end of a spar. But the color and shape and angle were wrong. I kept moving toward the fort, curious.<\/p>\n

I reached the beach and kept my eyes fixed on the mass.<\/p>\n

The mass moved. Then it moved again. There was indeed a living thing perched atop the fort! It was black on the bottom and white on top. A bald eagle.<\/p>\n

I stopped and took a couple of photographs with the camera on my ancient phone.<\/p>\n

The bird lifted off and pivoted east over the dunes and shore pines. I took a couple more photographs and then headed toward the fort. I was surprised to find myself running. It felt good. Perhaps more people should run toward a bald eagle without stopping to think why.<\/p>\n

In all my years of driftwood fort building, I had never seen a bald eagle perched atop a driftwood fort. A driftlog yes, but not a fort. The image belonged on a unit of Oregon currency, a currency secretly exchanged by people secretly building their own country.<\/p>\n

I arrived at the fort and searched for a feather. I’ve always wanted to find a feather from a bald eagle, although I had no idea how to recognize one.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>There was no feather, but a different sort of decoration left behind. The fort was splattered in eagle shit, and in such a pattern that it suggested a Kandinsky at work. There was even eagle shit on the cairn I’d built outside the fort! I smiled . I marveled. There had to be some powerful magic in eagle shit on a cairn. It was worth mulling over and deeply intrigued me as all bald eagle things do.<\/p>\n

I sat inside the fort and ate a simple meal. I considered taking the cairn with me. If I did, I would assuredly be the only person in Oregon, perhaps the world, displaying a cairn splattered in eagle shit on a bookshelf. And the display wouldn’t be d\u00e9cor.<\/p>\n

(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.) <\/i><\/p>\n\n

\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I crested the dune and gazed south a half mile down to the beach, to the driftwood fort under my construction for the last month. I had worked on it at least a dozen times and erected a dozen spars to give it a striking appearance from a distance. High tide was closing in and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3695,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,5,32],"tags":[195,36,47,48,13,243],"class_list":["post-3694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-driftwood-forts","category-meditations","category-oregon-beaches","tag-bald-eagle","tag-beaches","tag-driftwood-forts","tag-oregon-beaches","tag-oregon-coast","tag-south-jetty","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3694"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3698,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694\/revisions\/3698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}