Posted: Wednesday, 03 March 2010 10:44AM
Never Turn Your Back On An Eagle
Steve Corbett Reporting
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
A couple of weeks ago I stopped for milk at Manning’s on Meadow Avenue in Scranton and saw a Wilkes-Barre cop I knew years ago. He said he was headed to the Poconos to see the eagles.
“The real eagles,” he said, not the football team from Philly.
The man was talking about America’s national symbol, that big strong bird that stands for liberty and justice for all.
“Sometimes you can see 10 eagles in flight in a single day,” he said.
I told my wife about the eagles when I got back to the car.
“We have to go some day,” I said.
During the traffic and weather report with Rusty Fender yesterday I mentioned the eagles and said I never personally saw one. I expect that most people in the United States have never seen a live eagle, especially one in full flight in its natural habitat.
And that’s too bad.
A symbol is good but a living, breathing symbol of a nation that shares the land with the natives is better.
Seeing eagles on television or in photos is no match for the real deal.
It didn’t take long for listeners to hit the phone lines with the news.
Eagles live among us, the caller said.
A guy working construction in Old Forge spoke of seeing an eagle. Another guy said he watches eagles in flight near the Susquehanna River from the window of his parents Forty Fort home. Eagles soar in Pittston, too. A great eagle is alive and well near the Plot Section of Scranton. A man said he saw young eagles. Another man said he watched an eagle take off from his nest.
The emails arrived with eagle news as well. Listeners wrote of the feelings they experienced seeing eagles in hard coal country.
All I could do was imagine and yearn for the day that I, too, could see the eagles in the sky over Northeastern Pennsylvania. I felt like a little kid looking forward to a trip to a special place, the same feeling I got when my eighth grade class took a day trip to the nation’s capitol in Washington, D.C., where I bought a string tie with a sketch of the Capitol emblazoned on its plastic base.
Although I lost the string long ago, 45 years later I still have the base. That personal, plastic keepsake also represents a symbol of my country. But it’s not even close to a real, live eagle.
Listening to caller after caller, I closed my eyes and imagined the wing span, the beak and the overwhelming beauty of this great bird of prey. I thought about the wild majesty that represents the free spirit of a risen people who crave the wide expanse of independence.
And I felt the draw of freedom.
We sometimes take freedom for granted. We forget that we must continue to fight for the rights of men and women who lack equality even in this great land. By ignoring their plight, we desecrate the sacred symbol of the land.
Never turn your back on an eagle.
Too much is at stake to betray the promise of liberty and justice for all. Too much rides on the grand wings of this massive representation of who and what we are as Americans.
I vow to one day go to the eagles.
All I need is one.
And when I find my eagle, I will close my eyes and silently promise to continue freedom’s fight against oppression and evil.
I will never turn my back on an eagle.
You should never turn your back on an eagle. You should stand in awe at the flight of giants that take wing and glide above our lives. You should vow to find your own voice of freedom and use it.
You should also take heed that others might not be as true to our symbol of freedom as they should be. Some might even try to destroy the glory of the image and even the bird itself.
A caller yesterday said that somebody shot arrows at an eagle’s nest along the river.
Nothing is sacred to some Americans.
They, too, should take heed.
Never turn your back on an eagle.
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Corbett
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