a great horned owl is stalking me

but for my own good, so it's fine

This morning,

Suleika Jaouad

wrote about a friend of hers who wakes up each January 1st, goes into nature, and claims the first wild animal she sees as her guide for the year, researching the creature and devoting herself to learning from its ways. Reading those words, my body said yes. Yes, this is wisdom.

I might have missed the January 1 date, but no matter; I already know my guide, now that she mentions it. Just before the holidays I was visited by a Great Horned Owl while walking my dog through the woods. Owls are common in central Iowa, but to see a Great Horned Owl is more rare, and feels like a privilege any time it happens. The last one I spotted was almost exactly three years ago, when we had just moved out of town and into our prairie house. I had looked out the window and saw him perched on the backyard fence post, facing away from me. He then turned his head 180 degrees and stared straight at my face, his huge, otherworldly eyes unblinking and stoic.

Great Horned Owls have the largest eyes of any terrestrial vertebrate, eyes nearly as large as those of humans — but on a body about a third as tall. Such eyes have an increased ability to take in light and can see excellently in the darkness, when small prey are out and running amok. Because they are highly active in the night, Great Horned Owls are associated with the unconscious realm. Encounters with these animals have been said to call a person inward, to examine hidden shadows, longings, and awareness. With super-attuned eyes, we can ask to see what we’ve been missing or ignoring within ourselves.

What was this place, I’d wondered, where Great Horned Owls pay me mystical visits at 3:30pm on a random Tuesday? This was my reality now, I supposed. Such things would happen often out here, I was forced to assume.

Reader, they do not.

I have lived a hundred years between the first Great Horned Owl visit and the second, even though technically only three have passed. I understand now that the first visit was an omen, a warning that I should not be here unless I was willing for nature to have its way with me. If I inserted myself into this ecosystem, I did so at the mercy of it’s rewilding.

And so it was. This place has changed me. I am grateful but I am also grieved, for evolution does not come without a thousand deaths and I have wept a river of tears over each one. But if the woods and prairie have taught me anything, its that death is an impermanent experience. There is always a resurrection. Life will always find a way.

Great Horned Owls are one of the strongest birds, capable of lifting twice their weight. They can and do hunt prey much larger than themselves. What’s more, their stubbornness matches their strength: when they clinch their talons, it takes a force of 28 pounds to open them.

I remember being 15 and reading a magazine profile of the singer Monica, in which she was quoted as being proud to come from a long line of strong southern women. I can’t explain why, but something clicked in me when I read Monica’s words. In her claim I saw the women in my own family — grandmothers and aunts, great-grandmothers and cousins, southern on both matriarchal and patriarchal sides — in a new way. I saw their strength, and their resilience. For the first time (among millions to come), I could see that they had been the ones to hold their families together. Their whole lives, they had lifted twice their weight.

This is what it means to be strong, I remember thinking. I, too, was proud of my female lineage.

It wasn’t until I was deep into adulthood that I could think more critically about this familial legacy; whether the women I admired had any choice but to be strong, whether they wished it could be different, whether being strong made them happy, whether being strong killed them. The ideal I had for so long taken pride in began to unravel. Who gets to define strength? Is there more than one way to be strong? Can I honor their strength by choosing a different strength for myself? Risky questions, all. And the talons of old narratives clench tight.

I crave silence these days; I must have it, if I am to stay present to these questions when it feels horribly uncomfortable to do so. I’m not online much anymore. My social circle is the smallest its ever been. I don’t even watch movies or shows in the evenings; I sleep instead. None was a particularly conscious choice; my soul simply knew it needed space and quiet and went to work to make it happen.

Great Horned Owls are notoriously silent creatures. Because of the size, texture, and structure of their wings, they make almost no noise when flying, unlike their birds of prey counterparts. This quiet might be part of why humans associate owls with wisdom; we respect the sacred nature of soundlessness, where as a species we have historically found both God and self.

Still, Great Horned Owls are not always silent; their hoots are deep and confident, carrying for miles. On my second encounter with the creature — and given the species’ loyalty to place, I have reason to believe it was the same one — I heard him before I saw him. I’d like to think it was a greeting, a remembrance, but I know his hoots were just a warning of my presence in the woods.

A warning to whom? A mate? The general woodland creature public? Himself? Who can say, but it went on for minutes as I tangled in the dog’s leash and stumbled through dead brush, near tears in begging my tufted friend to allow me just a glimpse. Eventually I caught one, but only from the back as he was flying away, a sore consolation prize after the spine-shivering first encounter of years prior. There would be no eye contact this time; there would only be a presence. Only the assurance that I was exactly where I should be.

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Event update before you go!

The glorious folks at FutureChurch, who work tirelessly for the full inclusion of women and LGBTQ+ people in the Catholic Church, are hosting a virtual book club on The Mystics Would Like a Word, and I’ll be joining them this Wednesday evening for a discussion. Admittance is free but you do need to register, which you can do here.

Much love to you,

Shannon