How naturalists are made

 A hawk, intent on a target in the borrow ditch, crossed the road in a dive, missing the windshield of my truck by a couple of feet.

He wasn’t big, so I’d guess young male. The Wise Woman and I saw plenty of red, so I’d guess a red-tailed hawk.

Red-tailed hawks can dive at more than 100 mph, so we barely got a glimpse. We looked at the other, doubting whether we’d seen anything at all. But when an animal that size sails that fast between the windshield and the hood ornament, all your mental notes from the walk through the woods disappear. All that’s left is awe.

Later, I thought about a remark E.O. Wilson made about how naturalists come into being. If you want to create young naturalists, put kids in front of an animal in the wild, he said. It doesn’t work if you put them in front of a textbook.