My one mystical moment.

Marlin D. May

Years ago, I was on vacation. I was driving north on the Pacific Coast Highway. My little Honda hatchback was in fine form. I had just shod it with new Pirelli’s, and together we were eating up the curvaceous asphalt. After a few days, I’d made it up to Big Sur. As is always prudent on PCH, after a couple of hours on the road I’d found a safe place to stop, rest, and drink in the scenery. It was the kind of landscape that makes people move to California. Behind me were golden hills studded with Monterey pines and live oaks. In front of me a cerulean sky dipped to meet the greenish cobalt Pacific. Waves crashed against the boulder strewn shore and there was no sound except for the waves and the wind.

I looked down at the ocean and near the base of the cliff I could barely make out a red tailed hawk beginning a session of cliff soaring. She (it was fairly large and therefore probably female) tracked northwards then southwards, back and forth, with each cycle bringing her slightly higher up the cliff, all without a single wing beat. I watched in silent awe. Finally, her northward track brought her level with the roadway and the turnoff where I stood. She banked southwards once more and glided parallel to the cliff, towards me. Displaying a mind boggling mastery of the air, she slowed as she neared me, until, she stopped, hovering in the offshore wind, and stared at me, not more than twenty feet in front of me. I stood rock still and stared back.

How long we considered each other I have no idea. Rationally, reasonably, it could not have been more than a minute or two, but time seemed to stretch, stretch, stretch.

Finally, the spell was broken. She banked down south and shrank to a dot, then nothing. I sat down next to the car and sobbed, overwhelmed by the beauty of it all.

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