We could talk here today about Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel and Donald Trump. We could argue over new-age militias, gun control and presidential tears.
We could trade insults and opinions and pretend to know a whole lot more about everything than we do.
Or we could take a moment to contemplate that snowy owl.
The owl has been everywhere on social media lately, seen soaring over Highway 40 in Montreal, a serene presence that’s all the more stunning because it roams through Facebook and Twitter in the midst of the grim daily news.
It’s not the typical animal meme either, nothing cute about it, nothing contrived. It’s not a dancing cat or a gun-toting dachshund in camouflage.
It’s just a bird floating high above the frozen ground, its black-flecked white wings spread, its little owly eyes beaming straight into the airborne traffic camera.
“Magnifique harfang des neiges capté par les caméras de surveillance du réseau routier sur l’A-40 dans l’ouest de MTL,” wrote the Canadian official whose tweet launched the zillion shares.
As a bonus, along with the photo, we get to learn that “harfang des neiges” is French for “snowy owl.”
I’ve never shared an animal photo on Facebook but I posted this one for the reason so many other people have: I’d never seen anything like it.
Once I saw it, I couldn’t stop looking at it. It was only an image, but it felt like an intimate encounter with a living, palpable creature. It made me feel I understood a little more about owls and the sky.
In the past few years, snowy owls have shown up routinely in Chicago, but to see one not only airborne but eye to eye is a rare experience. The photo makes you feel like you’re flying too.
Staring at the owl, I thought of Wendell Berry’s poem, “The Peace of Wild Things,” which begins:
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
That snowy owl seems to stir a similar sentiment in everyone who sees it. It lifts a viewer out of the daily agitation, offers a small dose of peace.
I have a friend who found a similar consolation last week in an episode of PBS’ “Nature” called “Animal Odd Couples.”
She’d had a hard day at work. She’d been to a funeral. Lying in front of the TV, she was comforted by the weird animal stories.
There was a goat who befriended a blind horse, leading it to pasture and back every day for years. There was a jaguar who befriended a dog instead of eating it. There was the tortoise who became friends with a goose, the cheetah who became buddies with a retriever.
“It was these little contained moments of joy, watching animals frolic,” she said as she extolled the show’s pleasures to me afterward. “It made you wish that all human beings could be that way too. It’s that hope: Can’t we all just get along?”
By the way, she’s not a sentimental woman, not the type to toss “joy” into casual conversation. She’s a news junkie. She’d be happy to argue over Obama and Trump and new-age militias.
But sometimes even the hard-news types want nothing more than a nice animal story. We all need to be reminded that the human kingdom, with all its jousting and preening, is just a tiny fraction of the world.
That’s why when I’m out for a walk, I often detour through the Lincoln Park Zoo. The monkeys make me laugh. The zebras make me stop and stare. The lion makes me feel how light my bones are.
Way back in a corner, there’s even a snowy owl or two, though not in the expansive glory of the owl in the photo.
If you haven’t already, take 15 seconds and study the photo. Feel your spirit rise, your blood pressure go down.
Then resume your favorite argument.
Twitter @MarySchmich