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Breakfast With Eagles

This wasn't funny, or anything remotely scary.  It was beautiful.

In the summer of 2005 the group expanded from two, just Ian and I, to three.  Joe, a long time friend of Ian's and one who had shared in many adventures in the past would join us that summer.  As it happens, he has been on every trip since, as well.  This was also to be the last summer of truly roughing it; before the gear started to expand in quantity.

We had brought two small boats with us.  One canoe, and one "peapod" type rowboat that Ian had built himself.  Between the two and with only three people we easily packed all our gear under the railings and had everything watertight and secured.  The trip took a little longer than the year prior.  Since we weren't facing darkness and horrible weather, we took our time and enjoyed the trip.  After about three hours we made it to our camp on an island in the north of the lake.  We had chosen this site because we knew, from exploring the year previous, that there was an Eagles' nest not far from the camp.

For everything that happened that weekend, nothing quite sticks with me as much as breakfast on Saturday morning.  I usually cook breakfast (since Ian and Joe take care of dinner most trips) and while I was cooking I got "shushed", and called over to the picnic table.

Sitting on the top of the eagle's nest were two mature bald eagles.

Stationary, and they were definitely watching us.  Sizing us up to see if we might make a decent meal, I'd bet, but they never came closer to investigate.  But they watched us, never the less.

It's hard to entirely explain the experience.  Yes, it was a nest and seeing birds sitting in their own nest is hardly remarkable; kinda the way it works after all.  It was more the attention they were paying to us which was so memorable.  We weren't all just there; we were there.  Part of it.

So I finished cooking and we arranges our seats to face the nest and ate our breakfast with the eagles.