Wild Encounter with a Cooper's Hawk

The wildest encounter I have ever had with an animal in the outdoors occurred during a canoe trip down the Delaware River in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area back in the summer of 1983. My co-leader Margaret and I were guiding adolescent summer campers on a combined canoe/backpacking that was taking us down the Delaware River and then north on the Appalachian Trail in New Jersey.

One day Margaret and I were in the same canoe. I do not recall who was in the bow and who was in the stern.  As we paddled downstream, one of us noticed what appeared to be a bird flapping its wings midair several feet over the water and a few yards from shore but going nowhere. Paddling closer, we realized the bird, a  Cooper's Hawk, had become entangled on a fishing hook suspended from a fishing line hanging from a tree branch out over the river.

Margaret steadied the canoe as I stood up in it. I reached up as high as I could and grabbed the line. I then pulled it down as low as I could, passing over the tangled bird until I could reach the line above it.  Using my Swiss Army knife, I cut the line about a foot above the hawk and sat back down in the canoe while I was holding the fowl by the line. Margaret paddled over to shore where we both climbed out onto the New Jersey bank with me still holding the hawk, suspended by its wing, the fishing line still in my hand.

Hawk after we removed the hook

While I held the hawk by the line, Margaret emptied a small nylon stuff sack and put the sack over the hawk's head, covering the beak. She then cradled the creature in her hands while softly singing to it.  I used my knife to carefully cut the three barbed hook, line attached, from out of the crook of the animal’s wing.

After I removed the hook, Margaret sat the hawk down on the bank and removed the stuff sack. The Hawk stood up straight, puffed out its chest, and pulled back its wings as if enjoying its freedom, and stared straight at us. I grabbed my  camera and snapped the attached photo. I don't recall how long all this took, but it seemed like a half hour or so.

Margaret and I had no idea how long the hawk had been suspended mid-air over the river by its wing, nor do we know what eventually happened to this beautiful creature, but we both felt intense satisfaction for having freed it from its predicament. The experience was the highlight of a very memorable trip. Thirty-seven years later, I still recall it as one of the most intense, transcendental wilderness encounters with an animal I have ever experienced.

My Mentor Muir

What book or author has motivated you to get outside, venture forth into the wilderness, hit the trail, and experience nature?

I was already a bit of a hiker, backpacker, and camper when, as a teenager, I first encountered John Muir through the pages of Edwin Way Teale’s The Wilderness World of John Muir. I received this 332 page hard back as a Christmas present from my sister and brother-in-law when I was sixteen years old, over forty years ago! I think I read it soon after and have come back to its worn pages time and again. Like an old friend whose stories remind me of younger days, whenever I read Muir, whether from the pages of The Wilderness World of John Muir or from The Mountains of California or Muir’s Mountaineering Essays edited by Richard Fleck, I find that Muir’s words can usually transport me back into the wilderness, even wilderness I have never personally experienced.

Muir’s compulsion to experience nature and the wilderness, and his ability to write about what he experienced, captivated me and motivated me to go and do likewise. Reading about his 1,000 mile walk has convinced me that had they existed at the time, Muir would have hiked both the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail, and would have probably blogged about his adventures if the technology had existed. His descriptions of the High Sierra, especially the area around Yosemite, invited me to not only explore nature and experience my own wilderness adventures but to also, like him, write about them. Maybe there is just a little Muir in me when I blog about a hiking or backpacking trip on Summit to Shore.

While not directly backpacking related, my favorite Muir story is, without a doubt, “Stickeen,” a touching story about a brave little black dog that accompanied Muir on a glacier while Muir was exploring in Alaska. I have returned to that story many times, and almost every reading brings tears to my eyes. If you have ever experienced K-9 companionship on the trail and have not read this short story, a mere nineteen pages in Teale’s The Wilderness World of John Muir, do so at your earliest opportunity, but make sure you have a box of tissues handy.

This post, slighty edited, first appeared on The Trek.