{"id":7289,"date":"2021-08-26T06:47:12","date_gmt":"2021-08-26T13:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=7289"},"modified":"2021-08-26T06:47:14","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T13:47:14","slug":"the-falcon-and-the-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/the-falcon-and-the-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"The Falcon and the Woman"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-7289\" data-postid=\"7289\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-7289 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n\n\n<p>I needed to kill some time before an auto repair appointment. Clackamette Park in Oregon City beckoned. There was always interesting people and bird watching there, and I occasionally found choice cuts of beaverwood to add to my Portland-area collection, surely the only one of its kind outside of the homeless people living along various watercourses who collected beaverwood for the construction of their shanties. I guess that technically doesn&#8217;t qualify as a collection. To think that homeless Oregonians would utilize beaverwood in the building of their shelter in 2021 defies reality, but I have seen it with my own eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I parked the car and walked a path toward the Willamette River. A few men fished. A few men sat in chairs and drank coffee. Hundreds of geese and ducks and gulls did their avian thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A woman stood near a picnic table and smoked. She had several plastic bags full of something around here. She had the unmistakable look of a homeless person. I passed her and stopped at the river&#8217;s edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I looked upriver. No boats. A bird came into view. It flew like a raptor. It landed atop a dead tree 30 yards away. It turned its profile to me\u2014a peregrine falcon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s a great moment whenever you see a peregrine falcon and I moved toward it. I watched the falcon for a good five minutes as it surveyed the river. Nothing like killing time watching a falcon perched in a snag waiting to launch and rip some prey out of the sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Something crackled in the trees behind me. I turned around and began walking toward the sound. It was the homeless woman standing and apparently searching in a stack of driftwood doubtless thrown up during high flows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She saw me and smiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI&#8217;m looking for the right stick for a cane for my husband,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cGood luck,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I turned back toward the falcon. Gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This disappointed me. I wanted to tell the woman about the falcon and let her marvel as I had.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I needed to kill some time before an auto repair appointment. Clackamette Park in Oregon City beckoned. There was always interesting people and bird watching there, and I occasionally found choice cuts of beaverwood to add to my Portland-area collection, surely the only one of its kind outside of the homeless people living along various [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7290,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","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\/7289","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=7289"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7292,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7289\/revisions\/7292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}