I think I shall start here.

This was the scene just beyond our back yard when I got home from work tonight. My heart dropped at the sight of our majestic eagle nest and its slow but sure demise; since Sunday morning we have watched it fall—clump by clump—from a perch high above Bickley’s Pond, just across the tiny cove from our back yard.

That nest and the goings-on in and around it have been a source of endless fascination since we moved into our house five years ago. (Okay, dear friends, I hear you. It has been an obsession for some in our home—namely, me.) But wouldn’t you be mesmerized by the drama of a bald eagle family just outside your back door?

Just three years ago this was the glorious site:

Mom, Dad, and two eaglets we loved so much they felt to be our own. How many hours did Tim and I spend watching the nest, worrying over that family? Were there eggs? Would the babies survive? Were they getting enough food? Would they ever fly?

They did, of course, and in no time those babies were grown and gone.

The nest began to show some age, as did the tall pine that housed it. But from time to time that eagle couple would do a little remodeling, crossing our sky with talons of twigs and branches to repair it.

homekeeping

They also built two additional nests at the back of our neighborhood, deeper in the woods. Since the eagles still came to fish the lake, we saw them regularly and hoped against hope for another nesting season within our view.

That didn’t happen, exactly. Still, Springtime 2012 rolled around and rewarded us with something else—something wonderful, and surprising.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

bold and beautiful in healthier tree times