Miracle Sightings Abound

This past week I've been thinking a lot about snowy owls. In a rare phenomenon, their population has exploded this winter and many left their home in the Arctic tundra and have been spotted all over the USA. No, I myself did not spot one, but during a hike today on the Great Hill trail here in Acton with my boys, my younger son asked me whether I thought we would see one. I responded that, if we did, it would be incredible, but it would also be a miracle. As we trekked along, my son suggested a few places we might see them...perhaps nestled up in one of these tall pine trees?

I must confess that in the back of my mind I had been wondering whether I would see the snowy owl. After all, my past week was replete with small epiphanies involving this elusive bird, culminating last night in my random selection of a family movie (starring Jack Black, Owen Wilson, and Steve Martin) that turned out to be about, of all things, birding, and the snowy owl being the ultimate prize! As I walked, what struck me, instead, were these stone walls in abundance.

New England's charm in large part comes from its stone walls. The stones from these walls are 15,000 to 150,000 years old, and when the settlers arrived, they were mostly buried. With the ensuing cold winters, the stones were heaved up by frost and as the land was farmed, the rocks were hauled to the fence lines, forming rock boundaries that were later rebuilt to be more aesthetically pleasing. By the late 1800s, many rural farms were abandoned and the remaining walls were either enveloped by forest or their stones were quarried. Thankfully, there is a movement now to preserve these stone gems.

At the end of the trail, my son asked me whether I knew that the owl hanging he made for me in second grade (it's in my bedroom) was a snowy owl. I smiled, looking at both him and my older boy as he talked. I did, in fact, have a miracle sighting today. My boys are my snowy owls! Miracle sightings abound every day, and sometimes we just have to take down our walls to see them.