Status Updates From Sakalas keleivis

December 27th
Peregrine vs. Sparrowhawk (which we just learned to know as an equally skilled and ruthless hunter. Quite the thriller…

December 24th

Christmas Eve brings a significant literary turn. The chapter shift to a dark tone, featuring - in beautiful language - man, us, as a horror figure looming over all other creatures of nature, who recognize him as such. And then, later, after sundown, there’s the silence over the spoils on the battlefield. Prey and predators…

A rabbit, inflated and foul with myxomatosis, just a twitching pulse beating in a bladder of bones and fur, will feel the vibration of your footstep and will look for you with bulging, sightless eyes. Then it will drag itself away into a bush, trembling with fear.
We are the killers. We stink of death. We carry it with us. It sticks to us like frost. We cannot tear it away.

[A heron, its wings stuck to the ground by frost]
Its eyes were open and living, the rest of it was dead. All was dead but the fear of man. AsI approached I could see its whole body crashing into flight. But it could not fly. I gave it peace, and saw the agonized sunlight of its eyes slowly heal with cloud.

No pain, no death, is more terrible to a wild creature than its fear of man. (p. 126)

December 23rd

Four yards between Baker and the peregrine feeding at dusk. Amazed that he dares to risk alarming the bird. Surely he can because he knows he will see more of them after. Regardless, a bond is made

December 22nd

They seemed bored, sterile; they had no meaning […] They had no song. Their calls were harsh and ugly. But their soaring was like an endless silent singing. What else had they to do? (p. 123)

A shift in tone. Baker compares with older days and establishes things are looking bad for the peregrine: the eggless nest, foul poison burning within them like a borrowing fuse…

(December 21st)

Now their colour is like the mauve rim of a clear sky where the sun has just gone down. (p. 118)

The hawk puts out his feathers, looking cuddly and harmless. Only the armour-plated legs and the sickle toes do not relax, will never relax in life. (p. 119)

December 18th

what was left smelt fresh and sweet, like a mess of raw beef and pineapple. It was an appetizing smell, not the least bit rank or fishy. I could have eaten it myself if I had been hungry. (p. 117)

(December 17th)

(December 15th)

He fell so fast, he died so furiously from the sky to the dark wood below, that his black shape dimmed to get it, hidden in a shining cloud of speed. He drew the sky about him as he fell. It was final. It was death. There was nothing more. There could be nothing more. (p. 114)

(December 12th)

All the monstrous artefacts of man are natural, untainted things to them. All that is still is dead. All that moves, and stops, and does not move again, then very slowly dies. Movement is like colour to a hawk; it flares upon the eye like crimson flame. (p. 108)

(December 5th)

December 3rd

Too long to quote, but the first half of this short diary entry is a simply beautiful form of poetic prose on the many properties of mud as another element.

(December 1st, December 2nd)

I scanned the sky constantly to see if a hawk was soaring, scrutinized every tree and bush, searched the apparently empty sky through every arc. That is how the hawk finds his prey and eludes his enemies, and that is the only way one can hope to find him and share his hunting. Binoculars, and a hawk-like vigilance, reduce the disadvantage of myopic human vision.

November 30th

Unconsciously I was imitating the movements of a hawk, as in some primitive ritual; the hunter becoming the thing he hunts. (p. 102)