I cannot say with certainty that it was the first sound I heard this morning but the soft, four-note call of an owl in the tall spruce near our bedroom window was definitely the most memorable of whatever other sounds might be on the list. At first, I thought I was imagining it. But, then, in just a couple of minutes, it came again, soft but unmistakably clear.

As I roused myself further from my sleep and its warm covers, I remembered late evenings and early mornings on the farm in Todd County, Kentucky. Paul and I would hear the calling of owls and try to figure out which tree along the edge of the woods was serving as perch. Occasionally, we could see the shape of the night hunter along the line of a limb, silhouetted against the sky.

One of my deer-hunting sons told me recently about a closer encounter he had with one. “I was sitting in a tree stand and it was still so dark I couldn’t really see. But I sensed its presence and then felt the wind from its wings as it flew by me.” He also heard the bird land on a branch nearby. After a while, he heard the slightest scratching of claws against bark as the bird launched itself from the tree. Again, he felt the air from the edge of its wings as it brushed by him and he caught a dim blur of its shape in the predawn light.

There are evidences other than sight that lead us to some of the greatest wonders of this life, a world unseen speaking to us in the silent brushing of soft wings and a sensing of a wind that is not of this realm. There is, in such things, a testimony more real than the deceit of sight and the assurance of knowledge. But, we must take time to be quiet.

We must be still.

H. Arnett
12/01/11