Page 50 of Boston
“Okay,” Cora said. “I’m not sure I see it.”
“It’s about six feet deep,” he said. “All the twigs and branches up at the top, they kind of look like they’re falling down? And then there’s that green piney overhang at the top.”
“Oh, yeah,” Cora said, recognition lighting her voice. “I see it now.”
“They sometimes fly into the nest from the back,” he said. “But not as often as the front, so we might not see them.”
He fell quiet, glad when Cora did the same. Boston loved holding still and watching nature move around him as the silence infused his soul.
Time passed and the sky lightened, and then right before his eyes, a beautiful golden eagle landed on a branch about halfway up a tree only fifty yards in front of him. He pulled in a breath at the same time Cora said, “Holy cow, Boston.”
So she saw it too.
The bird fluffed its feathers and then preened before settling into a sit and observing, its head jerking to the right and then the left.
“That’s a golden eagle,” Boston whispered. “Looks to be a mature one too—an adult. They don’t get as big as the bald eagles, and of course, their head and tail feathers don’t turn white.”
But Boston found them just as majestic and beautiful as their cousins. Hawks and other birds moved around. The bald eagles did not call again, but Boston kept his eyes on the nest every so often.
He estimated they’d been sitting there about an hour when he saw a swoop with a flash of white, and then the nest in the tall Jeffrey Pine wobbled a little bit.
“I think there’s an adult in the nest,” he said.
Cora didn’t respond, and Boston watched and watched some more. Then, as if God wanted to make sure that this day wouldbe the absolute best one of Boston’s life, the adult bald eagle hopped up onto a higher branch right at the back of the nest.
Boston and Cora both gasped this time, and he couldn’t believe the show this eagle was putting on. He looked left and right, lifted one leg, and preened down the front of his body.
“How do you know if it’s a male or a female?” Cora asked.
“The females are way bigger than the males,” Boston said. “But I can’t tell from here. They’ve definitely got a juvenile in the nest, though, and I think that adult just brought breakfast.”
Boston’s stomach rumbled at the thought of eating, and he stayed right where he was for another few minutes, until the bald eagle flapped off the back of the nest, dropped at least thirty feet, and then soared to the left and out of sight.
“That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” Cora said.
Boston chuckled as he got to his feet. “They’re pretty incredible.”
“Are we going in?” Cora asked, surprise etched in her expression as she looked up at him.
“You can stay out here,” he said. “The cabin is literally right there.” He pointed to the right. “I’m going to go start breakfast, and I can bring it out to you when it’s done.”
She nodded, and Boston returned to the cabin to brew coffee and make ham, cheese, and egg breakfast sandwiches out of bagels.
As he worked, his dream of owning his own place—with land and a house that had a real kitchen and a full bedroom—continued to grow and flourish.
He’d told Cora about it, and now it seemed to be the only thing he could think of.
Especially now that you’ve kissed her,he said to himself, a wide smile covering his face. He’d certainly spent an unhealthy amount of time thinking aboutthat, and he hurried through thebreakfast preparation so that he could return to the gorgeous woman he was falling for.
“It just feelslike we got there a lot faster than it’s taking us to get back,” Cora said, a note of complaint in her voice.
“That’s because you have to go back to your regular life when we get back,” he said. “Before, you were excited to see the cabin and the eagles.”
And wow, they’d had a lot of eagle encounters in the last couple of days. This morning, the nesting pair had chatted back and forth several times, and Boston had remembered to bring out his binoculars. He’d been able to see the adult eagle when he’d arrived with a fat, juicy fish clasped in its talons.
“It’s only another mile,” he said to Cora, though she’d been going slower and slower since they’d stopped for lunch.
Boston didn’t particularly want to go back to his regular life at Silver Sage and in Coral Canyon either, but he had church tomorrow, and cousin night on Monday, and plenty of other amazing things in his life. The eagles and being out alone in the wilderness always reset him to a place of goodness, to the center of his soul.
