A beautiful chicken hawk patrols the area behind our house. A vigorous flyer –you know the species – it surveys the territory from a perch high up on a GT&T telephone wire, swooping down occasionally to snatch a kreketeh or some other delicacy. The bird is robust; there’s a wide trench nearby and the pickings must be good. I’ve spent some time watching Mr Hawk (okay, it could be Mrs) and the truly remarkable thing is that there is an old piece of former kite tail hanging down from the wire, and the bird always comes to rest on precisely that spot. Maybe it’s like the ‘X’ on the runway that identifies your landing, but on a wire running hundreds of feet, Mr Hawk always goes to the kite tail spot. I’m talking scores of times here; always on that one spot. It’s probably the country boy in me, but I find that amazing.
Secondly, while the bird is supposedly up there with lunch or dinner in mind, he is often, frankly, just hanging out. He’s preening, flapping his wings, looking about, sometimes apparently dozing (it can get hot out there, you know), and basically passing time. It struck me the other day that many of us, me included, should take a page out of the chicken hawk’s book and spend some time just sitting down somewhere on some late afternoon, or lolling in a hammock, and letting your mind wander wherever it wants to go. A good measure of understanding or realization comes from that kind of private pondering; our forefathers used to indulge that practice; today, we’re too busy texting or tweeting to bother.
Today, it’s the quick fix. In music, the quick hook, never mind that long build up; in sport, we want nuff scoring and preferably now – hence gritty 20/20 instead of the patient techniques of Test cricket; in food, we want it fast – never mind the