Owen felt the natural rhythm of his feet crunching fallen leaves as he walked down the trail near his cabin. He was getting worried as he considered this songwriting retreat he had assigned for himself. He looked up at the canopy of brilliant October color and cursed at himself. Even surrounded by intense beauty up here on the mountain, he still couldn’t write a decent damned song. He was exhausted by this bout of songwriting bulimia. Every result of his writing binge had to be purged for the sake of his self-respect.

Owen’s dreary thoughts were pierced by a chorus of laughter. He looked up from his boots to see a young man and woman up ahead of him, a few feet off the trail. They were both looking up at something in the tree they stood beneath. “You’re on crack, Honey,” the woman drawled through a smile. “I don’t see anything at all.”

“I swear I saw it,” the man replied. “Look closely.”

His curious nature forced Owen to investigate. He stopped at the base of the tree, a comfortable distance away from the couple; undetected despite the crunch of leaves. As he joined them in staring intently through the uppermost branches of the stately, ancient oak tree, he momentarily lost his curiosity to the magnificence of the tree itself. For that moment, he was breathless. The tree was in its height of color. Oranges, reds, and yellows seemed to set the beautiful thing afire with a secret passion of its own. Owen felt a strange camaraderie with this old man of the East Tennessee mountains. It blazed almost obscenely to show its love for the world, much like Owen did. But then his passion wasn’t so secret. Not anymore.

Owen’s thoughts were interrupted (thankfully) by the other man’s voice, telling his wife, “There, Precious. You see it?”

Owen still didn’t know what they were supposed to be seeing. Maybe they were just admiring the old man’s Fall wardrobe. He turned his head to watch the couple. The man, a tall mulatto with dreadlocks, was an oddity in himself. His trendy hairstyle belied a down-home essence created by his shabby plaid flannel shirt, old ragged jeans, well-worn Doc Martins, and a general air of country boy comfort. He pulled the beautiful young woman’s back into his chest and took here hand in his as he pointed to the mysterious something in the high, heavy boughs.

Owen watched the young woman as she squinted, widened her eyes, then closed one as if to aim a rifle. She was obviously a forest goddess: A petite young white woman with a mass of coiled dark auburn hair. Owen might have found the couple odd-looking, but he was surprised at how at home they looked together. He couldn’t suppress a smile as they laughed and teased each other like a couple of happy teenagers. Finally, the woman exclaimed, “Oh my God, Terrance! I see it! How did he get out here, though? I didn’t think they lived here – only out West.”

The man named Terrance answered, “I don’t know, Precious. I hear they’ve been releasing them in different places to attempt to boost the population. Maybe this is one of them.”

Owen’s curiosity in the mysterious being up in the tree returned. He shielded his eyes from the sinking sun’s glare with his hand, but ended up tipping his sunglasses over his forehead. Finally, he saw the object of the couple’s wonder. A huge male bald eagle, sitting on the old man’s blazing broad shoulder, surveying the mountain ridge as if he owned it. He probably did.

The thought made Owen chuckle. He saw both halves of the adventurous couple start out of the corner of his eye. He drew his sunglasses back over his eyes and regarded the couple warmly. “Sorry,” he said with his most disarming grin. “Didn’t mean to scare y’all. I was curious what y’all were look at. Cool huh? Way over here? Way away from where he belongs.”

“I don’t know,” the man mused, talking to Owen as if they were old friends. “What do you think, Precious?”

The woman smiled affectionately at her husband before she leveled deep green eyes to Owen’s gray ones. She grinned and shrugged, then looked back up at the eagle. “Maybe he belonged here all along.”

“Interesting thought,” Owen replied. He shook his head to relieve the ache he felt at the intangible exchange of affection between husband and wife as he watched them. He wondered why this couple was so fascinating to him. Why did he feel so connected with the oak tree and his buddy the eagle? It’s a tree for Christ’s sake! What had this scene stirred in his blood that was now screaming? He shook his head again to straighten out his wayward thoughts and smiled at the couple again. He extended his hand. “Owen Darcy.”

“Terrance Washington,” the mulatto replied, a look of surprise and respect crossing his golden eyes at the mention of Owen’s name. He shook Owen’s hand and continued, “This is my wife, Elise.” He looked to his stunned wife, then back at Owen. “I thought you looked familiar.”

“We love your music,” Elise cut in, regaining her countenance. She smiled as she shook Owen’s hand. With something that could only be called country girl grace, she continued, “I always figured you for a mountain man.”

I think I've figured out why I don't like half of the stuff I've written.  I'm kind of a careless writer when I'm just getting an idea down on paper.  I leave out a lot of important stuff and I don't describe things as well as I should.  Also, my syntax and mechanics need some improvement.  I need to experiment more with sentence structure and word choice.  I'm afraid all my writing is too flat.  Of course all of this means that it will now take me FOREVER to get anything accomplished.  But I suppose once I get my skills better honed and dust off some filed information from my advanced grammar and composition classes, I'll speed up.  

I've got a couple of really good ideas.  One for stories and one for articles.  I don't want to divulge too much about either yet because I still don't know exactly what I want to do.  But both these ideas will lead to a lot practice and a lot of fun formatty stuff.  I think I may even take a web design course or two once I finish my MT certification.  Can't hurt.

I was bad on vacation and didn't write any.  Partly because I didn't have a writing space I liked and partly because everything else was so distracting and fun.  Oh well.  I may get a funny story about chlorine burn out of it, though.