On our farm, the story begins and ends and takes place in the 40-acre poplar bush. This bush offers protection from the prevailing northwest and west winds.
In April, I found an owl nest in a leaning poplar tree – perhaps 80 feet in the air. When the wind blew, the nest swayed to and fro. I saw movement in the nest – there were the little tufts of feathers, the tufts that give the great horned owl its name.
Later in the spring, grass began to grow, as did columbines and raspberry. Later still, oak seedlings, chokecherries and poison ivy as well as many little plants I do not know the names of. Sometimes I would detect the owl on the nest; one time she was sitting in full view perched on an old, dead, tall poplar stump.
Seeing me, she silently swooped away.
Gradually trees leaf out. Everything is green.
A few weeks ago, there was a terrific wind, causing damage to cattle sheds and taking down many trees. I went out to see what I could see about the owl nest. There on the ground directly below the owl nest was a young buff-coloured owl, with brown stripes, yellow eyes staring, head turning.
It became a daily trip to see him. I contacted a friend and was lucky to have someone come and look at the owl. She said that human contact was not good. So we left little mice up in a tree for the owl and left him.
One morning I went and saw the little owl sitting on a log. He never looked my direction, so I quietly went away.
That evening I took out a little ladder and some little mice to leave in the tree. The owl was nowhere to be found. There was something on the ground near the place I had last seen him. It was a large feather. It may be a hawk feather, as there is a pair of red-tailed hawks at the western side of the bush.
We are born, and life is a strange mixture of deep joys and sorrows, sadness and happiness. All around us dramas of birth and life and death are unfolding, in nature and in the lives of other human beings. You just never know. Big winds can come along and blow us off course, an illness that shocks us, a loss that knocks us right down, or a tragedy that we cannot imagine. We cannot control the winds; we can adjust our sails.
In Psalm 23 we are promised that the Lord will go before us even through the dark valleys. He in fact leads us. That to me is an extremely comforting thought. In Romans, we are reminded that all things can work together for good. God is with us in our journeys to the 40-acre poplar bush.
