H is for Hawk {Page-Turner}

“H is For Hawk”. The book title is reminiscent of children’s books. My mind even thinks it would be great for one of the Montessori books, go figure. There is something of a child’s frailty in Helen McDonald’s memoir as she recalls her fall and laborious rise after her father’s death - the urgency of finding someone to hold on to, to rely on and give you the stability you are achingly missing.

Books in my life seem to have a destiny of their own and it is no surprise in the end that, after having read about “H is For Hawk” on Sara Tasker’s "simple lifestyle blog", it finally made it on my Kindle. It took me some time to download it, but somewhat it had never left my mind. The book has found its way to me in a timely manner, almost a year after my dad’s death.

Helen McDonald painfully misses her dad too: he had been an active photojournalist and actor in her life and passion for birds of prey. From the day of his sudden disappearance, she drowns in a world of confusion, insecurity, troubled sleep and foggy days: “I was in ruins. Some deep part of me was trying to rebuild itself, and its model was right there on my fist. The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief and numb to the hurts of human life.”

 Her love of birds of prey and her need for a savior leads her to Mabel, a goshawk (not a falcon!) she decides to buy and train. Mabel appears as “A griffon from the pages of an illuminated bestiary. Something bright and distant, like gold falling through water." The goshawk needs a strong soul and hand to trust while the author needs to soar from the trenches of depression, back to life and humans. She starts by stretching her hand toward the murderous bird of prey.

Long hours of dedication, work and commitment start once Mabel arrives in Helen’s apartment and fills it with expectations and its fierce presence. The two need to get to know each other and feed each other to survive. The process brings us all back to the centuries of falconry and its very specific world and terminology that permeate the book: fearing, muting, jesses, sails… A world of its own, far from the present and its grieving veil.

We are constantly pulled back and forth between past and present in search of balance (the right flying weight) and a reason to believe that flying, lifting oneself is possible despite misery and difficulty. Mabel becomes Helen’s partner as they build their future together. With them, we learn about Terence Hanbury White’s life (1906-1964): the author, among others, of The Goshawk, relied on Medieval techniques to train his own goshawk - and failed miserably. 

With Mabel by her side, Helen won’t travel alone along the path of recovery, back to the light of the surface and self-reliance, up to the point where she writes: “Hands are for other human hands to hold. They should not be reserved exclusively as perches for hawks.”

This rings a bell, right? Call it destiny or coincidence, it seems that “H is for Hawk” is the perfect complement to one of my favorite movies of the year: “Into the Wild”. Nature in all its roughness, cruelty and clarity confronts us with our true selves. Is nature a life-savior?

Credits: drawing by TheDaydreamer