How My Daughter and I Got Attacked by a Bald Eagle on a River Trip

I deeply love taking my family on river trips. It always plays out the same.“Hey kids!” I holler. “Do you want to go down the river?”“No!” they reply in a unified chorus.“Well, too bad, we’re going anyway!”Then I urge them out the door though they grumble and complain. We get on the water, and within fifteen minutes their attitude has changed.“Daddy, this turned out to be the best idea ever. We promise that we will never resist you again. All your family activities are wonderful, we’re so ashamed to have doubted you.”They say that last part with their eyes and the way they shift from foot to foot when I ask them, “Well, did you have fun?”They don’t say “no” which is a victory in itself.There’s a stretch of river within walking distance of our house that can take anywhere from an hour to three hours depending on how high the water is. Even when the current is fast, it’s not all that dangerous. Still, I insist on life jackets for everyone.There’s no greater joy than being on the river. It’s both peaceful and dangerous, but that’s the beauty of it. As long as you float gently and don’t attempt to resist the power of the water, you’ll be fine. The second you become stubborn and try to stand fast against the current, you find out how insignificant you truly are.In that way, it’s a good life lesson.I have a fleet of inflatable stand-up paddleboards which I use like a kayak. They can be deflated and stuffed in the trunk. I throw my bike in the car, drive to the finish, and then ride home. That part takes about half an hour. Then we walk to the water and begin our trip.Sometimes I am unable to rouse them and I go alone. It brings me a lot of peace to go out on the water. I don’t bring my phone. It’s good for you to float for a few hours and watch the shores of a river scroll by instead of endless, malicious memes.On the last trip it had rained. There’s a bend in the river just past the highway bridge where a gigantic pine tree towers over the landscape. It’s one of those trees with branches that are so enormous you can see patches of brown bark through the needles.The river is wide there and shallow. So, from the perspective of a wild animal, that tree is the equivalent of a luxury skyrise. There’s a great view, and the fish are easy to spot in the shallows.As I navigated that portion of the trip, I looked up and saw a nest with two regal bald eagles standing on a branch. If you’ve never seen a bald eagle in real life, you’d be surprised. They’re gigantic. They stand about as tall as a sitting Labrador begging for treats.The two eagles looked miserable because of the rain. They watched me without comment as I floated past.I felt bad for them. “It’s not a good day to be an eagle,” I muttered. There they were, sitting alone and miserable in the cold summer rain. I’d just begun to pity them, when one lifted his wings and dove into the sky. “Oh yes,” I thought, “eagles can fly.”As quickly as that, my pity turned to jealousy.I finished the trip, and a few days later, I turned to my daughter. “Come on, let’s go down the river! There’s something I want to show you!”She agreed, and I was delighted because going down the river with my kids always makes me happy.The bend with the eagles is about forty minutes into the trip. The anticipation made me excited because I wanted to show her the magical scene of gigantic bald eagles sitting like sentinels of nature up in the branches.We passed beneath the highway bridge. I could already see the giant tree up ahead.“Look up there!” I said, pointing at the eagle’s nest which looked like a gigantic tangle of branches in the tree.My daughter sat in front of me on the paddleboard. We went through the bumpy little stretch of shallow water that ran fast around the bend.As we got closer to the tree, I couldn’t see any activity, so I paddled closer still. I thought we could get down by the base.“This is where the eagles live,” I said. We both looked up. Still nothing happened, so I put my hand to my mouth and went, “Ka-caw! Ka-caw!” I was hoping to see a little eagle face peer down over the lip of the nest.But we saw nothing.The current had already begun to push us past the tree. So, I righted the paddleboard and prepared to get on with the journey.“Oh well, no eagles today,” I said with some disappointment.We slipped under some low hanging pine branches and we were just about to complete our circuit around the bend. That’s when I noticed the eagle.Up ahead, coming up the river like it was a highway, came the mama eagle. She was flapping her wings with an urgency I’d never seen before. She got to the bend and ascended in a wide arc, her predatory eyes darting left and right.Pausing to take a brief glance at her nest, she turned back to the water and that’s when she saw us. We’d just passed beneath the branches, and we were exposed.“It’s alright,” I said. “We’re on our way, no harm done!”But the mama eagle didn’t agree. She dove down, straight at us.From a distance, an eagle looks huge, but that’s nothing compared to what they look like when they dive down at you. Her wingspan brought to mind the dawning of the night. The tips of her feathers went from horizon to horizon and blocked out the sun.Then there were the claws, sharp and deadly and glimmering like knives in the sky.“Um…” I said, and began to paddle.My daughter faced forward as if in denial of what was happening. Her body tensed, and she said, “Daddy, I don’t like this.”Her tone reminded me of the time she asked to get out of the flume ten seconds before the big drop. “I’m sorry dear, we’re stuck now. There’s nothing I can do.”The dreaded helpless parent feeling.The eagle hovered in the air above us like an angry shadow, but it didn’t attack. It just hung there as if to say, “Go on, get!” It was as if I’d been rebuked by mother nature herself.Sobering to say the least.It felt as if the regal creature hung in the sky above us forever, but it must only have been a handful of seconds. I saw claws and beak and a glimmering crown of wilderness royalty. Then she landed on a branch, and sat there looking at us and judging.We floated slowly away. The current took us. Not fast enough for anyone’s liking.She watched us until we were out of sight. I kept looking back, and the eagle was not having it. We shared a moment rarely experienced between human beings and eagles.Out of sight, the tension broke and I started to laugh.“Everybody tubes down this stretch of river all summer,” I said. “I hope there aren’t going to be any problems with that eagle.”“I don’t want to talk about it,” my daughter said.We finished our trip without further incident. When I got home, I sat down in front of my computer and typed, “How territorial is a bald eagle?”“Are you serious bro?” the internet replied. “The bald eagle is the most territorial bird… ever!”The internet went on to say that eagles will even build two nests just so they can get away from it all.I began to identify with the eagle even more. I hoped I hadn’t disturbed it to the extent that it felt it had to move.But the next time I went down the river, the eagle was still there. She seemed to have gotten used to the endless parade of tubes and kayaks. Still, and perhaps it was my imagination, but when she saw the distinctive shape and coloration of my paddleboard, I thought she did a double take.“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” I mumbled, and hugged the far side of the river so as not to come close to the base of her nest.That evening, when my wife came home, I told her the story.“We tried to get close to where the eagles live,” I said. “Do you know what happened?”That’s when my daughter interrupted. “I’ll tell you what happened,” she said, her voice dripping with accusation. “Dad, had to start cawing at it. Ka-caw! Ka-caw!”“You didn’t!” my wife said.“You know I did,” I replied.“Oh my goodness!”Then my daughter described the terrifying ordeal and that’s where I got all the words that I use to tell the story to this day.“Her wings blocked out the sun!”My wife’s concern turned to mirth and we were both laughing by the time my daughter was done.“On a scale of one to ten, how traumatic was that adventure?” I asked.She thought about it for a moment and said, “Six.”There are so many days that come and go with nothing to make them remarkable. Even now, I can close my eyes and recall all the details of those harrowing few seconds on the boat with my daughter. It’s as if we’re in that moment again, she in her youth and me in my strength.I wouldn’t trade that for the world.Every now and then, she catches me laughing and telling the story to one of the other soccer or basketball parents.“I always know what you’re talking about when you start to scream ka-caw, ka-caw.”All of this makes me happy because it means one day the story will help her recall her daddy’s mischief. That’s the kind of memory that will make her smile.I envision a sequence of smiles stretching out like a river as she travels along the current of time.We need those little sparkling gems to provide a bit of light as we navigate turbulent waters.We all need moments that shine like smiles in our memories.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! 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