The last time I saw you this summer, I was with a friend from work who had come over to join in, binoculars and bird books in hand.
My friend is enthusiastic about feathered creatures, and you, a trio of stunning great horned owls that decided to set up shop in my next door neighbor’s tree back in early June, were no exception.
I pointed one of you out after my friend’s arrival. You sat in a tree, looking stoic, almost disinterested. Tired, maybe? It was still daylight, though that was waning fast. Daylight was where I first spotted you, where I continued to spot you. It was what made our meetings so special. Previously, owls belonged to the night; you were almost mythical, beings that serenaded the moon with hoots and silent wings.
Not you, though. Not for a few weeks, at least.
At some point on our final bit of time together, all three of you came out. My friend and I watched through our binoculars, watched you communicate with each other from separate vantage points. It was like watching friends in a group text, coordinating a meetup; small, quiet screeches in lieu of messages augmented by GIFs and emojis.
Then you flew into the dimming sky, and after about 40 days of being neighbors, we weren’t anymore; though I didn’t know that until a few days went by and you hadn’t reappeared, weren’t peeking at me curiously or with annoyance or some mixture of both.
My final sighting of you was almost three weeks ago, and I still genuinely miss you.
***
In Owl Moon, the absolute timeless masterpiece of a children’s book written by Jane Yolen and illustrated by John Schoenherr, a young girl and her dad embark on a quest to find owls in the snow-smothered wilderness near their home.
Their trek feels akin to something out of The Hobbit, or any other number of stories about vibrant, consciousness-altering journeys.
“(Pa) looked up as if searching the stars, as if reading a map up there,” Yolen writes. “The moon made his face into a silver mask. Then he called.”
I didn’t have to go searching, didn’t have to butcher your vocabulary of gothic-tinged baritone echoes to see if you’d respond. I got the privilege of seeing you, quite by accident, in the daylight.
At least one of you was a fledgling, a kid figuring the world out while your wings strengthened. The others were either parents or another sibling and parent. We never really figured that out with authoritative certainty.
Your roles were mostly based on assumptions. We named you: Little Sis (vocal, flirty, adorable), Bert (wholly inspired by your scowl), and Gabriella (what we assumed was the parental figure; big, authoritative, almost statuesque.)
In Owl Moon, dad and daughter trek through a winter wilderness near their home, hoping to find a single owl, trying so hard to be quiet as they leave twin trails of footprints in the snow.
“And the moon was so bright the sky seemed to shine,” Yolen writes.
A familiar sentiment, because the sky did shine most of the times I saw you. You belonged elsewhere, soared while most slept. But there you were, just the same, eyes wide and yellow and as piercing as new darts.
Most mornings I would check on you. Over time, I came to care for you. Your species’ night ninja façade was fundamentally altered. You Animorphed into goofy, affectionate animals with occasional antics akin to my dog, to toddlers with keys.
My family would watch you depart for nightly hunts. Once my 10-year-old read you a bedtime story called Little Owl Lost, and swears Little Sis smiled when she uttered “the end.”
We watched you endure a few bullying scrub jays. We saw you ride out a storm, our stares wide-eyed and our concern at potent levels while you gripped wind-spurred branches and tried to shake water from your feathers while lightning fractured the sky.
After the storm passed, two of you sat and seemed to watch the sun set.
“Piece of cake,” your visages seemed to say. “We’re still here.”
***
In Owl Moon, dad and daughter find what they’ve set out to find.
Time seems to freeze like the frost on their mittens and scarves. The owl’s silhouette blends into a massive tree’s shadow, then lifts off and flies right over them. It’s the same way you shimmered out of the tree next door, not there then there in an instant.
“Pa turned on his big flashlight and caught the owl just as it was landing on a branch,” Yolen writes. “For one minute, three minutes, maybe even 100 minutes, we stared at one another.”
I know you can’t grasp it, but there is genuinely something special and wholly unique about staring at you, about looking into your eyes. It is hypnotic and otherworldly and almost akin to therapy. Yours were eyes that seemed to see everything but only looked at me, at my family; knowing, sacred wells.
Eyes that became a cornerstone of the core memory that was my summer 2025, that are gone now.
That were a privilege to lock my own with at all.
***
I turned 42 a couple weeks ago, and my 40s have already been a lesson in life accelerating at a quicker clip.
As a kid, seasons seemed to last forever. The span between the ending of Christmas and the 365 days that followed seemed hindered by quicksand, by a chorus of black holes.
I’m watching my own children live this out, too, and I marvel at the irony of doing so through my own perception of time that feels as though it’s moving at light speed.
Because yesterday they were babies. Because hours ago they were toddlers. Tomorrow they’ll be teenagers, and next week they’ll leave the house.
I wonder how much longer it felt like the owls were there for them, how much that factors into the difficulty of the goodbyes they never got to say to you.
“Little Sis was really cute,” my 7-year-old said one morning when I asked her what she missed the most about you. “Bert was just funny. And it was super cool how they flew.”
“I really love watching them interact like humans,” my 10-year-old said. “And I’m really going to miss reading stories to Little Sis, because whenever I read stories to Little Sis, she would put her head on one of her shoulders and smile.”
So, yes. All this is to say: we miss you.
I still walk outside in the mornings before going to work and look up into your tree, and it’s still disappointing to see the unused nooks and branches. But my family is also cognizant of this moment in time, of the intensity and fierceness with which it has worked its way into our own personal histories; how we’ll be talking about it 20 years from now with the same amount of affection and wonder.
What a gift to know you for such a short time; what a perspective-shifting episode on how I honor and spend my day.
“Then the owl pumped its great wings and lifted off the branch like a shadow without sound,” Yolen writes. “It flew back into the forest.”
“‘Time to go home,’ Pa said to me.”
“I knew then I could talk. I could even laugh out loud. But I was a shadow as we walked home.”
***
July is almost over, and August looms, but there’s still time to make your own summer 2025 memories. Whether it’s special storytimes, learning to make bug out bags, summer-themed crafting and writing events, and a host of others, Jackson County Library Services has you covered.
And when it ends, it’s not really the ending either. It’s just a season. Others are always on the horizon, with new opportunities and memories to be made. Like owling, you may have to go looking. Or you could just stumble across it, quite by accident, and stare in wonder for weeks on end.
Either way, be ready. It’s what our Embrace The Wild summer reading program has been all about: Wonder is everywhere. What will you do with it?
“When you go owling you don’t need words or warm or anything but hope,” Yolen writes. “That’s what Pa says. The kind of hope that flies on silent wings under a shining owl moon.”