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A Conversation with Owls

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They’re back! “Hoo-hu-hoo. Hooo hooo,” say the owls, from the tips of the highest spruce trees. We rushed out, never having heard them so close. Usually we hear their conversations as a distant echo but that night a couple were right in the yard, as if to say, “we’re back”. Autumn in the yard We hear owls all winter. They call to each other through the long hours of darkness, always the same refrain, back and forth across the valley. But in the summer they leave us. Perhaps the 24 hour daylight drives them off. But where? Graveyard vaults? The dark side of the moon? Neil joined in. “Hoo-hu-hoo. Hooo hooo,” he said. They paused. We peered up at them with our headlamps and they blinked back with electric eyes. One answered, shocked, the other exclaimed in agreement. Then they opened their massive wings and soared across the yard, spread wide and white as sails. First snow As they passed, the sky seemed to open above us and daylight shine in. They se