50 ~ Brancher

Photo of a Red-tail brancher by the Long Island Weekly

In the language of falconry, a “brancher” is a young, nearly full-grown hawk that is in transition - it has not taken its first flight, but has move beyond the nest and now spends its time among the branches of the nest tree.  It has left the nest, but has not yet tested its wings and fledged into the wider world.

The lone young Red-tailed Hawk within view of the house is now a brancher. He (or she) apparently spent last night, and will likely be content for some days, on a limb just a couple of feet from the nest. Having never flown, the young’un feels security and safety in gripping the limb beneath his talons.  But this week, as the days progress, he will feel increasingly pulled to let go and launch into the void, and to trust in something – flight - of which he has no experience.  He will trade safety for destiny.

Haven’t we all been branchers at some points in our lives?  Sometimes we just know it’s time to leap, even with no experience of what we’re leaping toward.  That is where courage and faith come in – courage to let go of the safe and familiar limbs of our lives, and trust that what calls to us will bear us aloft. 

In fact, at such inflection points in life safety is an illusion. Only squirrels are meant to spend their lives moored amongst the branches of trees.  If the young Red-tail tried to do so, he would slowly and surely die. His parents would tire of feeding him, move on, and he would starve.  

All too often we encounter in our human world the spiritually starved – those who clung to a tree too long, until the leaves withered and fell, winter set in, and left us perched in the branches of a cold, indifferent skeleton. When in life our call whispers to us - as it will to the young Red-tail this week - despite the fear, we need to spread our wings and answer. Branchers no more.  

~

Back here on the ground, it’s already been a wild year for the gardens. The last weekend of May, like many of us I feverishly covered young plants (often futilely) to protect them from two nights of hard frost - apparently the first time in the past 18 years in these parts for frost on Memorial Day weekend. Then just days later, last weekend, I was watering madly to protect the survivors from the brutally dry, windy heat (91F/33C).  In the space of a week it’s been like shifting from gardening in Alaska to Morocco.  Let’s see what the rest of this theoretical growing season brings…