A Red-Tailed Hawk Visits Me in a Dream

Follow me to dreamland where a strange hawk encounter drums up some questions.

A few nights ago, on the cusp of the new year, I dreamt of a hawk.

I was crouched at the edge of my grandparents’ driveway, back in the neighborhood I grew up in, picking rocks from the gravel when a red-tailed hawk flew over me, swooping so close to my head that I yelped. I stopped searching to marvel at its glory, delighted at being visited so closely by something so beautiful and wild. I thought to call my friend from the house behind me to join in the wonder, but the hawk circled back around before I could. It flew toward me again, swooping low once more, and I saw then that its first pass had not been a mistake. It had aimed for me then and was doing the same now, diving toward me on purpose.

I laughed at the thought. I had been made small by my crouching, yes, but I was still a human. Surely on its next approach, it would see I was not the animal it had thought nor the right prey for its hungry belly. I did not take its intent seriously until it finally came close enough to grab onto me from the back. Even then, with its talons gripped into me, with its wings beating furiously to lift me, I still thought it all a comical mistake. A hawk taking a human!

Because I was in dreamland, the impossible became possible and the hawk lifted me.

One foot, then two, then three feet that bird lifted me from the ground. Even then, I found the happenings absurd. This hawk is actually trying to carry me away. It won’t get far—I’m too heavy and all together the wrong thing for it.

But on it labored and on it succeeded. Arrogance quickly turned to fear as we gained altitude. The ground left us and panic set in. I knew I needed to get free and get free quickly before we climbed too high and a fall killed me. I yelled for my friend inside the house. I tried to shake myself free but couldn’t. Survival screamed within me. I turned to grab onto the hawk’s legs and there in dreamland I wrestled with a hawk in midair and finally got loose.

Back on the ground, facing that beautiful bird, an eerie understanding passed from it to me that, even upon realizing I was larger than it had initially expected, the hawk had locked in on me. It was intent on making me its own and would not leave until it had done so. I knew I could not outrun it and that to turn my back on it was to make myself more vulnerable. I tried to negotiate with it, to talk sense to it—a silent conversation that did not end in my favor—all while slowly inching backward toward the house. I felt that if I could just get inside, I’d be safe, at least momentarily.

My hand brushed something in the grass and reaching for it, found a small, gnawed-off leg left behind from an animal carcass. I threw it toward the hawk, begging it to take that instead. The bird turned an odd form of feral as it tore into the leg and I lurched toward that small window of freedom. I ran toward the house, colliding with my friend halfway, both of us careening into the house as the hawk lighted upon us. We struggled at the door with the bird, finally closing it upon the hawk. We fell to the floor relieved while the hawk stayed, pacing the grounds outside, waiting.

I love the land of dreams. I love recalling mine, listening to other people’s dreams, and trying to untangle the wild stories within them. Some dreams are hilarious and some are scary but most are simply entertaining, a mysterious processing of the day’s events and thoughts, and I forget them within a few hours. But others stick with me. They arrive like an omen, potent with message. Often I feel an urgency to untangle some meaning from them, to listen well and closely. This was one such dream.

I awoke from it startled and afraid, that eerie feeling lingering of being hunted and made into prey by something unexpected. It stuck with me and lingers still. As the new year unfolds, I wonder: What is coming for me that will, at first sight, present itself as a wonder? Will some wild and beautiful thing turn into a threat to end me? I wonder this and more. I wonder if my mistake was arrogance in the face of the hawk’s approach. I thought myself above prey. I had forgotten that every wild thing I admire, every wild thing I want from this life also has a terrible and vicious underbelly. One comes always with the other and the danger of forgetting makes it easy to be taken and consumed.