Birds and hang gliding were my two passions in life. Luckily, I was able to combine them both
By John Stokes, Sevierville, TennesseeDecember, 1997
http://www.guideposts.com/print/12263
I was waiting in the director's office of the large metropolitan zoo where I worked as an assistant curator. The director walked in, sat at his desk and got right to the point. "John, we're not in the business of doing sideshows with a disabled bird," he said emphatically. "I'm sorry, but this Osceola thing of yours has gotten out of hand."
I wanted to interrupt right then and remind him how far that one-winged bald eagle had come since someone had found him nearly dead two years earlier, his left wing blown apart by a poacher's gunshot, how popular he had become with the crowds that visited the eagle exhibit and what an education he had offered the public about this tragically endangered species. But it was my boss talking so I kept still.
"Find a new home for Osceola," he said. "That's an order."
I suppose he had a point. Our zoo was for healthy animals, and Osceola required some extra work. But on that hot day in 1984, I didn't want to hear all that. In my mind the message was clear: Listen, kid, you and that one-winged bird can just hit the road! Scram!
The work I did at the zoo combined my two abiding passions in life—animals and flight. Growing up, I earned the nickname "Bird Boy." One reason was my fascination with all feathered creatures, whether it was Green Sam, my pet parakeet, or a clutch of orphaned starlings in the garage. The other was my singular determination to fly, which I first attempted when I was five by leaping off an old sweet gum tree with a bedsheet parachute stuffed into one of my mama's big leather handbags. Fortunately a branch broke my fall.
By the time I hit my 20s I was an accomplished hang-glider pilot. The one-man glider, from which the pilot hangs in a harness underneath the kite-like superstructure, was as close as I could get to genuine avian flight without sprouting a pair of wings. Circling a couple of thousand feet above the earth gave me an incredible rush of freedom, peace, and beauty. My problems, like the ground below, seemed to slip away. I lived for that feeling.
But as I left the director's office and stormed back to Osceola's cage that day, life's troubles seemed to smash me to the ground. I was trying to get over a painful divorce. I couldn't afford to quit my job, yet I didn't want to be separated from Osceola, who felt like my one true friend. Lord, what am I going to do? I prayed, more as a lament than an actual question. That's why I was surprised to sense an answer immediately: Have faith. I will show you.
Show me what? I wondered, plucking a herring from a pail and feeding it to Osceola. He looked at me sharply as if to say, "Hey, what's up?" and I fed him another herring, wondering if he would be able to handle the move.
Al Cecere, a filmmaker who had recently formed the National Foundation to Protect America's Eagles (NFPAE), helped me find a home for Osceola at a predator rehabilitation-center in Nashville, Tennessee, several hundred miles away. I kept working my zoo job, visiting Osceola whenever I could. I wanted to marry the woman I was seeing, but she called it off. Another failed relationship, I thought. I couldn't help wondering why my life seemed to go in circles.
My only relief besides work was hang gliding high above the earth, where eagles fly. Like Osceola used to, I thought one day as I drifted on a lazy thermal, turning a slow spiral in the sky. It made me profoundly sad to think that because of his amputated wing Osceola could never experience the unbounded joy of flight again.
Or could he?
The inkling of an idea began to form. I had once heard of a man who had developed a slinglike arrangement to take his dog hang gliding with him. At the time it struck me as a little crazy but admirable. Could I do something similar for Osceola? He would love that. It was just an idea, but someday....
With the help of funds Al Cecere managed to raise, the rehab center was able to hire me, and I moved to Nashville in the spring of 1986, taking a drastic cut in pay but ecstatic to be reunited with Osceola. I also got to work designing a hang-gliding harness for Osceola. "Don't worry, old bird," I told him, "someday you're going to fly again."
The rehab center was barely staying afloat. Pretty soon I found myself in charge of it, a mixed blessing if ever there were one. There was nothing in the bank. To save on gas I bicycled five miles to work on a busy road. A sympathetic friend gave me a gross of green beans and peas, and one morning I was reduced to eating peas and beans for breakfast. It had come to that!
Later that day I did some serious praying while sitting on a rock in the brush behind the center. I was dead broke. My dream of taking Osceola aloft was in jeopardy; I barely had money to feed myself, let alone to go hang gliding. "God, up in the sky, close to you, I'm fine. But down here on earth troubles just seem to pile up. If something doesn't happen soon I'm going to have to shut this place down and move in with my mother!" Just as before, a response formed in my mind: Hold on. Something is about to happen.
A couple of seemingly little things did. The center got a financial shot in the arm from a sympathetic donor. And Al Cecere called and offered to hire me and give Osceola a home. "John, I have this vision of an eagle center on a mountainside. It would include a breeding and rehabilitation facility as well as educational programs. I'm trusting God will open the door for us."
I had been trusting for a while now. My tank was empty and I was running on spiritual fumes. Al and I displayed birds outside shopping malls and in local schools, giving talks about the endangered bald eagle and collecting donations one hard dollar at a time. Then misfortune struck again. I fractured my life arm in a hang-gliding accident. I couldn't help thinking how it was Osceola's left wing that had been amputated. "Maybe flying days are over for both of us now, buddy," I told him. Still, when I prayed, I sensed a response: Something big is about to happen. But when? How?
By spring of 1990 my arm had healed and I was hang gliding again, getting my tattered confidence back. Al had had a brainstorm. A friend, country singer James Rogers, was performing at Dollywood, entertainer Dolly Parton's theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. James helped Al get a meeting with the folks at the park, where he pitched the idea of an eagle exhibit and center, complete with daily birds-of-prey shows featuring—you guessed it—Osceola and me. Before I had a chance to tell him what a long shot the idea was, the folks at Dollywood were offering to build the NFPAE an $800,000 facility, including an eagle aviary, on a mountainside, just as Al had envisioned!
Something big certainly had happened, so big it couldn't have happened without God. Nine months later Al and I, 20 eagles including Osceola, along with assorted owls and hawks, moved to the Great Smoky Mountains—all part of the Wings of America bird show and Eagle Mountain Sanctuary, the largest eagle exhibit in the country. We were blessed with success almost immediately. Then, just as my life finally attained some stability, along came another whirlwind. Her name was Vikki; she was a singer in one of the other shows. Oh, no, I thought. I know where this will lead. Again, though, I heard the inner voice: Hold on a minute. This will be different.
It was. In 1994 Vikki and I were married. Things were finally coming together in my life. One more prayer remained to be answered. Lord, I am so grateful for all you have given me. Please help us find a way for Osceola to fly again.
By February of 1996 I finally came up with a safe and workable harness. Then we had to get Osceola accustomed to the strange contraption. People sure did gawk when we drove a pickup truck around and around the Dollywood parking lot carrying a mounted hang glider with a man and an eagle slung under it.
On a cool April morning in 1996 Al and I drove to the local hang-gliding airstrip, where we unloaded the glider and Osceola in his travel kennel. Doubts and prayers skirmished in my head as the hang glider was attached to a towline behind an ultra-light plane that would take us aloft. I strapped myself into my harness while Al placed Osceola into his, secured it on a reinforced metal bar and clipped him to my harness. "Today you're going to fly again, buddy," I told him. Al put his hand on my helmet and said a quick prayer. We were ready.
The ultralight revved its engine and we got a rumbling, rolling start. Osceola struggled a bit, startled by the motion. Easy, buddy. Easy. As we lifted off and gained altitude, though, Osceola relaxed. At 2,000 feet I released from the towline. The buzz of the engine faded as I banked into a calm wind. We were flying.
I saw Osceola's head was bent slightly downward, moving deliberately from side to side. I followed his gaze. He was tracking a couple of hawks flying 100 feet or so below us. Thirteen years had passed since he had been able to peer down on the lesser birds of the air. Maybe I was projecting human feelings onto him, but I could swear I saw something like a spark of regal pride in Osceola's piercing golden eyes.
An incredible sensation of warmth swelled my chest. I pulled into a slow turn, catching a thermal and spiraling upward gradually. I knew then my life hadn't been traveling in circles but in a spiral, ever higher day by day, drawn closer by faith to God.
