When you feel the presence of the hawk totem, avoid distractions and focus on the task at hand.

 I’ve had two visits from hawk. The first happened at the beginning of the week. I was driving when this blur flew across the road in front of me, landed on the shoulder of the road, flapped its wings, and became airborne again with a small rodent clutched in its talons. It flew back across in front of me. Slowing the van, I got a good look at the hawk, it was brown with a white chest. Sort of speckled looking and beautiful. I think it might have been a Redtail, but can’t be sure. Then, on Wednesday, hawk again presented himself to me. Or rather I should say themselves, there were two hawks this time.

The road that winds through the small college campus in the town where I live is well-manicured and well- travelled. On my way home from water aerobics, I noticed two very large birds under a tree beside the road. As I passed by, I realized there were two hawks. Beautiful, youthful looking birds who were leisurely enjoying their breakfast right beside the busy roadway. I sat and watched them for quite a while.

When I got home, I went to get my Animal Speak book and looked up hawk’s message.  Avoid distractions and focus on the task at hand. Yep, that is a very strong message for me. I tend to scatter my energy. Hawk is telling me to focus. As you can see, the hawks in the pictures were not allowing any distractions, they maintained focus. Now if I can just apply their message.

A late summer excerpt from my nonfiction book,  Shenandoah Watercolors, a 2012 Epic eBook finalist. Free in Amazon Kindle from August 19th through the 21st.

We’ve had many misty starts to the day this August. Haze hugs the pond, parting just enough to reveal the long-legged blue heron fishing for his breakfast. There’s a country saying about the number of foggy mornings in August being an indicator for the amount of snows we’ll have this winter––a heap, at this rate.

Dozens of swallows skim over the pond as the sun sinks below the Alleghenies. If I were standing on a distant ridge, would it sink behind me, or the ridge beyond that one?

The water is calm now but was awash with waves during the storm that hit a short time ago. The grassy hill and maple tree are reflected on the surface, silvery and streaked with rose from the western sky. All is peaceful as a soft twilight settles over the valley. Utterly idyllic, until I pause to consider what all of those swallows are after. There must be clouds of mosquitoes.

Here’s another thought, where do all the birds spend the night? Are the woods up on the hill lined with birds perched wing to wing jostling for space on the branches? I’ll bet they make room for the big red-tailed hawk. He gets the whole tree––as many as he wants. It’s good to be king.

**Image of our pond taken by my mom, Pat Churchman

**Image of Hawk by daughter Elise taken up in the meadow behind our house

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Behind our farm is a large field that lies fallow in the winter and is planted with corn and hay in the growing season.  The edges of it are grown up in weeds and wild flowers.  The land slants uphill and meets tree- covered hills at the top of this wide swathe of land.  Nearer to the base of the field, just on the other side of our property, is a derelict 19th century barn where stray cats, possums, raccoons, birds, foxes, and sometimes coyotes hangout.  A red-tailed hawk patrols overhead and it’s a good place to see birds.  Tall, seemingly random trees enclose the site where the house once stood. This first picture was taken in the spring when it’s a fairly benign place to be.  Not so much on an eerie fall evening.

The farmhouse burned down in the 70′s and nearly consumed the old drunk who lived there with it, but he was rescued and stayed with my husband’s family for a time.  The foundation of the house, an old cellar, and outbuilding remain.  Everything’s overgrown and covered in vines.  The place has an abandoned look and a decidedly creepy feeling about it.  To the point where last fall my art major daughter Elise, my teen age niece Elizabeth, and I (at my suggestion) decided to venture across our side of the land to the old barn and take some pictures at dusk.  Why not, we thought, feeling adventurous.

We brought a flashlight, our intent being to stay until dark and have Elise take more pics with her camera of–we weren’t sure what–orbs maybe, before venturing home.  Some people believe sites with strong paranormal activity produce orbs that show up in photographs while not necessarily visible to the naked eye.  There was just one problem with this plan.  We’re chicken hearts.

Apparently the old man who lived at that farm until his death  (several decades ago) stored newspapers in the barn.  We chanced upon a small fragment of newspaper lying in the grass with the words The Devil printed on it.  That rather took us aback.  We looked more closely and discovered this snippet came from an ancient review of the horror movie, The Exorcist.   But why did only that eerie snippet remain?  Is that all it was, just a coincidence, or a warning?  Who knows, we didn’t hang around to discover.  Later, the coyotes came out and we were doubly glad to have headed on home.

Do I think there’s something strange about that place?  Yes, but I’m not bold enough to do any ghost hunting.  I don’t know how those who do have the nerve.


*Pics by daughter Elise

Summer has arrived in California. Since that season differens only a few degrees from Fall, Winter, and Spring, How can I tell? Because the air is now full of the Fragrance of eucalyptus. Yes, Summertime in California smells like a Hall's cough drop! California has other unique properties, as most people can tell you.

Only in California, can you:

***see a group of teenagers walk down the street on 8-foot stilts,

***drive through foothills so covered with wild clover they look as if they're dusted with gold,

***visit a city, located 4,600 miles from the Seat of Liberty, that was founded the same year America won its Independence,

***go to a college offering courses in Surfing 101 and Advanced Surfing,

***see red-tailed hawks sitting on lamp posts overlooking the Freeway,

***watch a live high-speed chase between cops and robbers every night on the 11:00 News,

***have the residents of an apartment complex take violent sides on whether or now to eradicate the rabbit population,

***have a pet in a fenced-in yard in a highly-populated area carried off by a coyote. (I'm with the Pro-bunny people here. Let the rabbits live, so Muffy and Fido won't become coyote lunch!),

***drive up a 20-degree incline to get home every night because your house is on the side of a mountain,

***watch that same house slide into the ocean as the mountain under it turns to mud,

***see the sky turn red because of nearby forest fires (the picture at left was taken on Alicia Drive going into Rancho Santa Margarita facing the Saddleback Mountains, during the forest fires 4 years ago),

***see a pair of mallards walking through a service station, checking it out,

***have your bed bounce 2 feet across the room from the aftershock of an earthquake 12 miles off the coast,

***watch the glass in your French doors ripple like Jell-o from that same aftershock,

***one of your work-mates has purple hair, a nose ring, and a bird tattooed on her tummy,

***gather with a group of people to look for the first swallow to come back to Capistrano,

***see someone you think is Tom Cruise talking to a neighbor, and finding out he really is Tom Cruise!