A young man in his mid-20’s - shaggy blond hair and a scraggly, red young man’s beard - drove a school bus.  The route that he drove took him through the sparsely populated, remote interior of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.   Following mostly dirt roads and muddy logging trails, he picked up the sons and daughters of farmers, loggers, taconite miners, hippies, Air Force wing nuts and commuters who drove daily to “city” jobs in Escanaba and Marquette.

He lived in a tiny, rented cabin in the woods with his young wife, who was the reading teacher at the six room school house that housed the entire district, grades K – 12. His bus was specially equipped with all-wheel drive and special tires that allowed him to cross unbridged streams and negotiate the axle-deep mud and snow so common for eight months of the Upper Peninsula year.  His route took him over 100 miles, twice a day.  The young man picked up all the children in the eastern half of the district.  An old man picked up those in the west.

This particular day was pristine. Stands of birch, giant maples and oaks ablaze in autumn color, intermingled with fragrant pines to form a canopy through which the dirt road tunneled.  The blue sky above showed up only in brief patches through the trees. The young man bounced along with his load of happy children, deep in thought.

High above the trees, a large, magnificent hawk circled silently in the bright sun.  Taking a bead on some unseen prey, it flicked its wings imperceptivity and dove quietly into the canopy.  Threading expertly through the branches and leaves, the hawk emerged at full speed into the tunnel of quiet along the road.

The hawk did not expect a large yellow bus.

The young man did not expect a hawk.

The bus was traveling north at about 30 miles per hour, the hawk was flying south, directly towards the bus, at 50 miles per hour.  Barely 20 feet separated them.  Within milliseconds they would collide. The eyes of the hawk and the eyes of the young man locked upon each other.  They gazed deep into each other’s brain.  There was no time for introductions, there was no time for translations, this was strictly business.  The communication was short, to-the-point, non-verbal, interspecies.

“Where did you come from?”  blinked the hawk.

“Where did YOU come from?”  blinked the young man.

“Which way are you going?”  blinked the hawk.

“The only way I CAN go.  Straight!”  blinked the young man.

“OK, don’t move”, blinked the hawk. 

Then the hawk flicked his wing tips and grabbed the wind, pulling up like a giant dive bomber, flashing white underbelly feathers in the windshield as he rode the air upwards and over the bus, barely grazing the top with his tail feathers. 

And with that, the hawk was gone.

The young man was transfixed.  Time had stopped.  The world was new.

“Hey, what was that?” shouted one of the kids in the seat behind the driver.

“Just a hawk,” said the young man from somewhere still deep within the mind of the big bird, “just a hawk.”

But the young man was profoundly moved by the experience, and he never forgot it.