Brooklyn is behind me, at least for the next five…six…seven weeks. OK, eight weeks. I’m still in denial about how long this cross-country adventure actually will be. First stop: the green, leafy edge of Atlanta, in a silent neighborhood of no sidewalks, from where I stage the theft of my parents’ car (they’ve fled the country, leaving behind their worldly goods, for now. A bit like rapture, but i can still talk to them via Skype). Here, no one is grilling jerk chicken out front of their house, filling the air with smoke and scents to make you salivate. No gang of ten-year-olds has taken over the streets with their skateboards, kicking yellow cabs as they cruise by. There is no man standing silently on his front stoop from the early hours to the late hours, lording over the street.
But as I walked into one of the many, many shopping center complexes that get routinely carved into what was once lush southern forest, a sound made me look up. The screech of a gull, perhaps, but not quite. I lifted my sunglasses and looked up to see a hawk, wings spread wide, as it soared by not thirty feet above my head. The birds are leading this journey. The peregrines that nest atop the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which links my borough of Brooklyn to its forgotten stepsister of Staten Island, and the other falcons throughout NYC are there by the grace of not God, but a gaggle of mad scientists and falconers who believed they could recreate a species decimated by DDT. Like the birds themselves, the men have scattered. I am heading west to find them, and visit a whole heap of long-lost friends who live along the way. Wanna come along for the ride?
Leonore says
Godspeed, Meera!
Can’t wait to hear how the set of wings you chose to carry you across country works out!
Leonore
tetrarose says
Meera! Brad just found your blog! God, I love a blog. I am a wannabe blogger, but I realize the really good blogs (meaning the ones I like) have lots of photos. To keep up the interest you gotta have kwalidy writin as well as the photos. And I am, as always, camera-less. Oh well, back to your journey, of which we are happily hosting one leg: yes, the birds are (thankfully still) everywhere.
In April I took Brad behind the Magnolia Curtain to my home town of Birmingham. It is just as you describe Atlanta– incredibly lush, with huge malls every five miles, even out where it was once west bumf**k. But one morning we were ambling through the B’ham Botanical Gardens and saw/flushed a raptor! This was in a suburban and densely peopled area, in between two small “villages” (genteel moniker for “more shopping.”) I was so glad!
Love to you and good luck on the road!
Mary
Chris E says
It is a not un-weird coincidence that Dictionary.com had “peregrination” as their Word of the Day yesterday, the day you launched this blog.
I mean, it’s not a word you toss off when you’re ordering waffles. You must have an inside man.
Also, on Friday, they chose my middle name. (!?)
http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2008/08/26.html
Pollyanna says
Meera girl -=
Happy travels…………..
I am sitting in the sun and cool autumn wind of the Middle Fork John Day — where cell phone service is 40 miles away but wireless internet enters my base camp.
The sandhill cranes fly over in the early morning but it’s the red tail hawk and the osprey of that we see in hunting in the late afternoon that always make me think of you.
In my opinion — your first blog entry is the introduction to your book! It’s got all the pieces and personal touch that really good writers strive for. I want to read more and more and more!
love you sister — watching you in the stars and moon