This Spring, Be More Eagle, Less Adult

Spring is upon us, and the best thing to do is to go outside, get your toes in the mud, and connect with the rebirth that surrounds us.

Rosie in the mud with widgeons in the background

It’s a rainy Sunday morning, grey and cool, and the kids on the street are up early and making a ruckus. There are three of them, and they won’t stop chirping and niggling each other. Seeing them brings a smile to my face as I head out the door to walk the dog. Soon enough, their heads will go from brown to white, and perhaps the change will mature them enough to keep from waking the neighborhood up so early on a Sunday.

It’s just after lunch now, and still raining. A procession of elementary school boys streams into my house and down to the basement to get their wiggles out. My daughter, seeing the rain, puts on her raincoat. Dressed like a dinosaur, she’s looking for someone to go splash in the puddles with her. I’m in.

We head out our door, past the daffodils and tulips that just started to bloom, and across the street. Our close neighbors and friends in their 70s politely decline Rosie’s invitation to splash in the mud (they would, but they have a visitor). She’s not sad, though, as she told me she wouldn’t be disappointed if they couldn’t join us. We hold hands and race down the hill, stopping to investigate the water coming out of a neighbor’s jerry rigged black plastic downspout that goes through the bushes before ending at the edge of the sidewalk. Rosie decides that we’re too big to get into the tube, and we’re off again. A Steller's Jay darts in front of us, and heads back into the bush.

We cross Lake Washington Boulevard and come to the boat launch. As always, there are people sitting in their cars, staring at the water through a piece of glass. They are there, but not completely present. It’s a beautiful view, with Lake Washington in front of you; on clear days, you can see Mt. Baker to the North across the bridges and Mt. Rainier to the south. Instead of mountains, the view today is of water and waterfowl; widgeons, seagulls, a pair of mallards, a few Canadian geese, and three pairs of Rosie’s favorite bird, the common mergansers.

I should specify: despite having parents who like birds, Rosie isn’t more of a junior ornithologist than your typical preschooler. It’s just that, with her shock of red hair that juts straight back from her head—especially first thing in the morning—my wife and I have convinced her to love the female merganser that she resembles. After attempting to walk out into the lake to greet her friends the merganser, we turn to our destination, a swampy puddle that’s a few feet from the water’s edge. Squelch, squirch, squelch, squirch.

We explore the mud for a while and then head into the lake to clean off our boots, delighting in the patterns formed in the water as the mud washes off our boots. Then it’s back to the mud puddle, pressing the bottoms of our boots into the soft earth to push down, deeper and deeper while trying to prevent the water from getting in over the lip of our boots.

Watching the mud wash off our boots

I look up and see the three juveniles who greeted me earlier this morning. They are having a great time, chittering away as they swoop and dive, honing their hunting skills. One of the bald eagles gets close enough to the hundreds of widgeons clumped together in the middle of the lake to startle a few of them, that flap away and almost take flight before realizing that they weren’t on the menu today.

The pair of mallards get out of the lake, and we follow them into the swampy puddle, giving them enough space to eat the bugs on far side while we look for our own tasty morsels. A red-winged blackbird makes himself heard from the tree behind the mallards. To our right, barn swallows, those most improvisational of flyers, go up, drop down until they almost dip a wing into the water, and then head back up, looping their way down the shoreline.

Rosie is in a great mood, and I think it’s because she is more attuned to nature than most adults. She knows, somewhere deep in her subconscious, that spring is a time of rebirth, and that the gentle rains are a good sign. She also hasn’t yet forgotten how fun it is to play in the mud.

The adults that walk and run by us inhabit the same physical space, but they are enduring the sprinkle, not enjoying it, on a completely human plane of existence. They listen to music, talk to a friend, or urge their dog on, not fully aware of how the joys of spring are unfolding around them. They walk with purpose, not presence.

But not Rosie. She’s on the same wavelength as those three juvenile bald eagles. Playing, exploring, and enjoying the rain.

We go back down to the water to wash our boots again. As is my habit, I’ve picked up quite a bit of trash that I need to dispose of. Seeing what I’m doing, Rosie looks down, and scoops up a hot wheels truck—score! We rinse it off in the water and she plays with it as I take an assortment of swisher sweet packages, styrofoam, glass shards, and plastic to the trash can.

We put the truck in her pocket. I reach into the chilly water and grab stones with both of my hands, throwing them into the air; we laugh as they smack into the water with a plop. She tries, but let's go too early and the rocks drop straight down. I show her how to do it, and she’s able to get it right on her third try. Up go the stones, down go the plops, and here come the belly laughs.

It’s getting close to nap time, so we head back to the house for a rest. I promise that we’ll go back out before dinner, and we do. It’s still raining, but our second round of squelching and squirching is just as good as the first. No one joins us down by the water, and the common mergansers have left, but the widgeons are still there in their huddled pack, as are bald eagles, who mirror our trip back to my street and make such a scene as Rosie and I get home that my wife turns to me and says, “how cool is that”?

Yes, how cool is that? That we live near the eagles, that spring is upon us, that given all of the weight adults feel right now, there’s a lightness of being that comes from being like a kid, from being present, from enjoying the rain.