by Crane, Ben;
It takes an hour to track them down, and we find them crouched and hidden in a wide, flat field. Using the cover of a dam wall, we get into position. Standing on the highest point, the jerkin’s (a male gyr falcon) hood is removed. He rouses his feathers and is away into the sky. An elite athlete sprinting up a glass staircase: three, four, five hundred feet, and climbing. Frank runs into the field. Twisting kite-like on invisible string, the jerkin continues to circle, rising higher in a tight corkscrew: six, seven, eight hundred feet, and beyond. Frank is halfway out and his dog is even further. Two grouse break early, three others lift up and curve downwind. The gyr oscillates, hesitates; the rest of the covey rise en masse. Twenty or thirty grouse cut and twist in different directions, a perfect bamboozle. The gyr, just out of position, falters, selects the slowest, sets his wings and folds over in a steep, parabolic arc, a pendulum gaining momentum. At a hundred feet above the ground the jerkin levels out behind the grouse and they fly horizontally, locked together for over half a mile, a marathon into the wind. With compact, blithe power the grouse rises into the sky, taunting, and confident. Sensing weakness in the young gyr, it begins to accelerate. Frustrated, the falcon digs deep and opens up, the depth and pace of his wings now fully formed. Just at striking distance, the unconcerned grouse subtly twists, mounting even higher over the jerkin’s head. This is too much. He slows, pulls off and circles around in a long left-hand turn. The grouse disappears into the horizon.
It takes a minute or more of hard flying before the jerkin is back above Frank in the field. Frank is walking slowly towards the dam and the disappointment felt by the members of our group is tangible. The jerkin, still dwarfed by the skyline, remains high, floating about in a tight figure-of-eight loop. As Frank reaches a ditch below the dam wall he startles a hen pheasant into flight. The jerkin, slightly offset from vertical, drops in slick silence; a black-lead spear, it is breathtakingly beautiful. Three, four, five… long… slow… seconds; a huge stoop reaching 80 or 90 miles per hour. The pheasant is tissue thin in the face of such force and crumples. The impact is audible, like a lump of wood hitting wet carpet. On the ground and with focused aggression, the jerkin repeatedly stamps the dead pheasant into the snow. The final blow cantilevers the carcass across stubble, and buds of blood and frozen earth scatter in the wind.
As we drive back to the lodge, the wind has pushed the cloud formations away and the sky is a light blue, with a pale, watery sun sitting low on the horizon. Crossing a small creek, we spot a pair of mallard ducks tucked down and protected in the curl of current. Still early morning and with another falcon to fly, we decide to take a chance. Removed from the truck, the falcon rouses her feathers in preparation for flight, then squirts a thin mute (faeces) on to the snow. A youngster and inexperienced, as she lifts from the glove she is hit by a crosswind and topples unceremoniously to the ground. Regaining composure, she sets off out over the fields. Adjusting to the bowling, blowing pressure, she begins to fly slowly into the surging wind, climbing high over us. Higher. Higher still. To the uppermost reaches required by a trained falcon. Close to a thousand feet. Any higher, and she would disappear from sight. We walk back down the road, hop over the fence and run at the stream. Unseen before, at least fifteen ducks take flight in different directions. A single mallard flies away then mysteriously doubles back, coming directly towards me. The falcon is in a pure vertical descent, a perfect teardrop stoop. I turn back to watch the duck. On the periphery of my vision a black, threading line, a thin, blurred streak, rips across its neck. The duck folds over and hits the ground with a muffled whump. Feathers from the impact spin on spines and skid across the snow, like miniature sailboats adrift on a sea of crystal white. The duck, coated in thick winter wrapping, is only stunned. Standing, then flying to sanctuary, she slides into the water. In my inexperience I rush to re-flush before the falcon has regained significant height. The falcon lunges, the duck dives, the falcon becomes soaked and useless. Popping up downstream, the duck whirls around in the current, faces me and quacks.
Chicago
On Christmas Day, I drive with Craig and his friends to the edge of an out-of-town shopping centre surrounded by food outlets, roads, housing, traffic, trains, work spaces and car parks. These buildings have been built on the feeding grounds and nesting sites of migratory duck and geese. The whole area is block upon block of governmental buildings; Lego offices, uniform, blank. Dead snow in a dead land; brown litter is blown about and pushes into bricked corners. In between the sprawling mass of low-rise, boxed-off offices, several neat man-made ponds have been dug to soften the edges of the angular architecture. Nearby, a stream fills the ponds and flows behind an industrial estate and a cinema. Beneath the water, cloth and discarded plastic billow in the current. Trapped between rocks are a wallet and a single shoe. A purple grey scum coats the roots of reeds. The ducks slot in, paddle and puddle about in shallow, acidic water. We prepare the falcon in the car park of a supermarket. A police car pulls up in an alleyway. The officer stares, we wave and he drives away. The falcon, set free and flying, disappears. A minute later she reappears over the concrete edge of one of the buildings, no more than a hundred feet in the air. We flush the ducks into the contained and controlled space. They cannot move or escape, and one strikes me on the shoulder, knocking itself unfairly off balance. The falcon hits it easily. Thankfully, the duck survives.
When the New Year is out of the way, my final few days are spent hunting rabbits in the woods with a goshawk. Craig smashes his ankle and is in pain, so we stop and I prepare for home. It was a strange and flat ending to my odyssey across America but, somehow, it was fitting.
It was the last trip I would take for over a decade.
Endings
What was it that attracted me to the different people I met, to the places I went? On the surface, it is obvious – falconry. It is true that, initially, my motivation was to learn and experience as much as I could about the eagles, hawks and falcons, their quarry and the landscape. As the next few years passed a gradual, more subtle set of values and observations became apparent. It was then that the behaviours and personalities of the falconers became as significant as the birds of prey themselves.
*
From scientists and atheists to the devoutly religious, Christian to Muslim, pale pinks and whites to light brown, walnut and black, short to tall, well educated to illiterate, male and female, adults and children, rich and poor, the falconers I met on my journeys were the most experienced in the world, and as varied a cross-section of humanity as anyone is likely to find. Each transcended the confines of these boundaries, relying instead on something far larger than limited man-made definitions to create their identities. Each shared a global commonality, a collective, overlapping character driven by the only thing that mattered to them: constructing a balanced working relationship with wild birds of prey. In questing for and creating an exacting feedback loop of mutual trust between themselves, birds of prey and the natural world, they excelled in the best qualities we own as creatures. In their element, rooted in the specifics of their landscapes, all were explicitly conscious of what it means to live with dignity and freedom. Without exception, they were kind, generous in thought and deed, lacked greed, were communicative, humorous, relaxed, open and confident. They all exuded self-sufficiency and carried themselves with sincerity and honesty. These characteristics were most evident in the tribal falconers but were threaded through every other culture from East to West. Falconry for them was not simply a way to pass time or a means to distract them from the vicissitudes of living. Birds of prey were the reason for life itself, nourishing them directly with food, with breeding projects, in university papers and PhDs, in work and in self-contained psychological peace. This level of commitment and connection went beyond any conception I had about falconry. At the time of each trip my relationship with the natural world, and hawks in particular, remained mostly separate from my lived life. Although I was passionate and enthusiastic about birds of prey, falcon
ry was a bolt-on accessory in the form of holidays or one-off adventures, a quaint hobby, something I did in my spare time, outside of teaching. I did not define myself as a falconer, simply because, in comparison to the broad spectrum of people I met when travelling, I was merely a pretender, just skimming the surface. I was a tourist, a passive spectator, at best.
This was about to change.
3
The Drop
Tomorrow afternoon will be another riotous summer day. After their last free meal I will walk the sparrowhawks from my cottage across the fields to a large privately owned stately home. Behind the mansion is a long, shallow lake, surrounded, shrouded and protected by a secret covert of oak, larch, ash, beech and pine. It remains untouched, is overgrown and devoid of overt human interference – bursting with natural life, food, water and shelter. I have no doubt these sparrowhawks will survive when set free.
Every hawk I have known or owned has been unique. These rehabilitated sparrowhawks have been no different. Each hawk is hard-wired to act and react in their own particular manner. Each displays instinctive quirks and differences by degrees of evolved behaviour. Throughout their training and rehabilitation it has been possible to tinker at the edges, manipulate and nurture certain aspects of these characteristics, but once fully grown, each hawk varied little in its specific reactions to the world. I can no more change the innate characteristics of an adult sparrowhawk than I can my own.
*
The writer Ben Okri describes being born as ‘a shock from which I never recovered’. I concur. I took a long time to be born and came out silent and angry. By all accounts, I glared at the doctor, pushed and kicked, then urinated over him. I have struggled with change and with my reactions to the human world ever since. I had my first counsellor when I was fifteen and a wide range of different therapists have passed through my life ever since. Their methods (although enjoyable and interesting) presupposed that the hard-wiring underpinning my thoughts, reactions and level of engagement were normal. It was not until I was around the age of forty-two that a clever, sympathetic and highly perceptive analyst suggested a reason for my sense of dislocation and difference, that the primary motivating impulses for my oddities and behaviour ran a lot deeper than I had appreciated.
‘Asperger’s’ has a whispered, hissing sound and is slimy. ‘Autistic’ sounds like ‘spastic’; it feels spiky and unyielding. ‘Spectrum’, on the other hand, is taut and twangs, a natural refraction of pure white light split open to reveal interwoven changes of colour. The phrase ‘autistic spectrum’ describes a rainbow range of odd thoughts, feelings and behaviours, a series of strange motivations arching wide and bright across the human mind. Each recipient is different and unique; some are locked away within repetition and precision, others are highly functional, seemingly floating through the world without too many issues. The only shared feature from either end is that we experience the world very differently from a large proportion of the rest of society.
On the outside, I appear normal. In my head, I feel like a badly levelled graphic equalizer. I have spent a long time covering this up, muddling along and pretending.
For as long as I can remember I have experienced the world erratically, as if aspects of my development have been arrested, or pitched on widely different levels. The overarching sensation I have daily is one of general confusion, fear and anxiety.
*
On a one-to-one basis, unless I know and trust an individual well, I lack the ability to consistently judge what people mean in conversations. I find it difficult to read facial expressions, intonations and meaning. I constantly strive to find clarity in the words and actions of others. I experience a basic conversation as multiple strands of meaning and trying to understand each unit in a logical order often overwhelms me. My mind panics, is slippery, steps ahead and jumps about with three or four alternative interpretations running concurrently. Rarely do I hear a full conversation; they exist predominantly in fragments and snippets of language. I constantly look for a speedy way out of contact with other people.
Hypervisual, I have no filter and get distracted by the trivial, say, a hair on the corner of a shirt, I jiggle my legs about and avoid eye contact in order to concentrate. In extreme moments (when people step too close or arrive unexpectedly) I have the sensation of being tiny; the whole world feels amplified. A raised eyebrow is a tidal wave and can throw me into a confusion of interpretation. It feels as if I am living on the surface of the other person’s face. When I am at my worst, I can spend several days replaying the words of a five-minute conversation, trying to decipher what was said and, more importantly, what was meant. Of course, within that timeframe I have had other conversations and so the layers of conversations and thoughts build and build in a messy overlap.
However, I have no problem discussing things that interest me. I can happily stand in front of a hundred people talking about hawks, or before a whole class of children and discuss the merits of a painting. As long as there is a conduit through which to discuss a topic I am interested in, then I am fine. Put me around a dining table with three strangers, though, and I fall apart. To stay on track, I often use pre-developed routines and stories prepared days in advance, and for a large portion of the time I exist in jokes; laughter in other people is an emotion I find easy to gauge. This makes me appear, superficially, charming, confident and free-thinking. In fact, I am trying to control the situation to gain the type of attention I can judge, to short-circuit my general confusion and anxiety. Consequently, I have a vague grasp of social conventions but no concrete understanding of hierarchies. They do not seem to make sense. I will blurt out the most inappropriate things without concern and with little realization of their effect on other people.
My emotions often arrive at the extreme ends of expression: black or white, good or bad, right or wrong. I either understand something or dismiss it completely, like a petulant child casting aside a particularly complicated puzzle. I find it difficult to organize coherent abstract emotions so, unless I have experienced a situation directly, I have a limited degree of empathy and can easily disengage from complex emotional situations. I get bored, abruptly break away from friendships, extended family and other relationships, preferring the safety and relative stability of my own company.
Without a specific location to visit, a set task or a pre-considered activity, walking through a town often feels illogical, frightening, complicated, synthetic and jarringly unnatural. Large crowds and shops, supermarkets or city centres often cause me distress. I genuinely do not know how we have ended up with the world we have created. Or, rather, I do know; I am just at a loss as to why.
Left to my own devices, I fall into self-made routines and find it difficult to compromise. Unexpected change or the potential for rapid change becomes a serious problem. I prevaricate, almost frozen to the spot with fear. When under stress, not knowing which way to turn or what I should do, I react badly. In preparation for fight or flight, trying to find a pattern, to predict an outcome, I make rash choices and stick rigidly to them. In these moments, I have no deep comprehension of my actions and can appear amoral and stubborn.
Even when not under stress, I feel a constant, restless humming under my skin. The wheels of my mind spin wildly, a self-perpetuation machine of continuous thoughts, fragments of memory, looped stories, images, sounds and details of conversations had that day, or from twenty years ago. I experience a constant wall of internal sound, a million different screens playing oddments and snatched moments of my life. When the noise becomes too much, I move. I move a lot. Inertia blinds me. I cannot sit still for long. So I walk, usually the same route, engaging in long, meandering conversations with myself, internally and externally.
Possessed with an acute level of hypersensitivity, I find it easy to tune into external movement and seem to notice and remember things of interest with an alarming level of clarity. Nature changes pace slowly and is therefore relaxing and intimate: quiet clouds moving, a change in the spr
ead of light over a landscape, a shoal of fish, a leaf falling to the floor, a bird flying, a wiggle of a tadpole’s tail, mayflies hatching. I can stare at a stream, mesmerized, for long periods of time, hypnotized with an almost synaesthetic sensation. I have an affinity with and understand these things because they are gentle and clear and reciprocate my existence on a level I comprehend.
If ever there was a state of mind or a set of behavioural patterns guaranteeing failure in close human relationships but success with the natural world, then mine is it.
