Creatures I Have Encountered in the Desert

I was discussing a retreat with a very dear friend when my thoughts encountered that part of my memory that stores the retreat center overlooking Tucson, Arizona. That is where I spent a couple of weeks about 13 years ago when I worked on certification as an Intentional Interim Minister. I have mentioned the center and my stay there a couple of times, but I haven't shared there stories about non-human creatures that I encountered.

 Eagle

Because of the time difference between Tucson and Louisville, I was awake well before sunrise.  I'd rise and go outside into the "desert" where I would sit on a stone bench, meditate, and watch the sunrise. The first day, just as the sun began to rise over the desert,  I noticed an eagle soaring very high above me, the new light reflecting off of its feathers.

Each morning I was blessed with the eagle's company. At some point my mediation began to merge with the eagle's ascending and circling glide. I flew with the eagle, seeing the earth through the peerless eyes of that marvelous bird. It was then that I was captured by the spirit of the eagle. The eagle has become part of my spirit--or, perhaps I have merged into the soaring spirit of the eagle.

Buffalo

One morning when I came out of my room, I found myself looking at an addition to the desert: a huge male buffalo! He didn't move; he just stood there. We did approach him; we stood on the sidewalk beyond which was the desert and the bison, awed my its magnificence and size.

We were transfixed by the huge beast! But then our instructors chased us into the dining hall for worship, breakfast, and classes. It was during the latter than we heard the beginning of commotion outside.We surged out of the building to our sidewalk beside the desert. The buffalo had not moved since we last saw it; but a truck had arrived to take that magnificent creature home, a dude ranch a mile or so away. from which the buffalo had wandered.

The buffalo, too, impacted my psyche. Being so close to that august creature gave me a cognitive and spiritual perception of the place Tatonka holds in the spirituality of Native Americans that all of my reading could never have provided. Like the eagle, the buffalo has become at one with my spirit

Representations of eagles have dominated the various headers I have used on Nick's Bytes.

Representations of eagles dominate the walls of my home.

This is one of the concret benches from which I watched the sunrise. At the retreat center, one stepped off the sidewalk and immediately entered the desert.

The buffalo stood in the desert a few yards off the sidewalk for hours, just as the bison in this painting.