If H is for Hawk, then
Hawk is for Hope, Hunger, Mania and Wildness.
Helen Macdonald, a
middle-aged Cambridge professor, archaeologist, falconer and poet, loses her way
when her photo journalist father dies of heart attack. She starts dreaming
hawks--about hawks, of hawks, with hawks again and again, till hawks became her
inevitable. So, her self-prescribed 800-pound sterling worth antidote for her
father’s death: training a “bulkier,
bloodier, deadlier, scarier” goshawk. (Goshawks are the most secretive and
bloodthirsty of the Hawk family.)
The goshawk becomes
Mabel. “My heart jumped sideways. She is
a conjuring trick. A reptile. A fallen angel. Something bright and distant,
like gold falling through water.” writes Macdonald when she encounters
Mabel. You meet Mabel. Mabel becomes the anchor of her life. Mabel becomes your
anchor to the book. Thus begins the intense, demanding, and transforming journey
with Mabel.
As Macdonald has no
peers who have successfully trained a goshawk, she starts referring old books
where authors have written their personal experiences or a guide book of sorts.
But she keeps going back one particular book, The Goshawk. That book chronicles the failed attempts of T.H.
White, an unfulfilled closeted homosexual, to train a Goshawk in the 50’s. Both
their stories go in tandem. Both the stories are so exhausting, filled with
sadness. There are times when you just want to put the book aside. But then
comes Mabel, recurrently, like a breath of fresh air. Like a new born,
experiencing everything for the first time, experiencing everything in a new
light. Looking at everything with “infinite
caution.” Engaging you with all your senses at the most as Macdonald (and
you) tries to figure out what Mabel is thinking.
Macdonald is so close
with Mabel; you feel like you are riding shotgun with them. As you travel with
them, you realise Goshawks are every bit savage and predatory as big cats. Every
time Macdonald removes Mabel’s jesses (thin leather straps tied to their legs)
out in the woods, you hold your breath. You witness the extraordinary scene of
Mabel hunting the pheasant, making the kill. You can’t help but wonder how
something so bloodthirsty can be so graceful at its entirety.
As Cheryl Strayed
(author of Wild) makes the walk, the
walk back to the person her mother knew. Helen Macdonald takes the flight to
find her father. But as Mabel and Macdonald move further into their relationship
Macdonald realises, “hands are for other humans to hold. They should not be
reserved exclusively as perches for hawks.”
Macdonald does not
alternate between wild and mundane. They come together. The line blurs in her
life. And that’s what you are left yearning for as a reader. For shots of
wildness in your daily life.
