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Chapter 18: Flying Free
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in H is for Hawk, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Living with the Wild
Fear, Grief, and Loss
Love, Trust, and Freedom
Time and History
Social Divisions
Summary
Analysis
Falconers describe a bird that’s in the mood for a hunt as “in yarak,” which comes either from a Persian word meaning “power” or a Turkish one meaning “penis.” Whenever Macdonald carries Mabel up to their usual hill, the bird comes into yarak as if she’s being possessed. Initially, hunting is a frustrating experience for Mabel; Macdonald was still manning her in the spring and early summer when wild goshawks learn to hunt the easy prey of baby animals.
At the end of the last chapter, Macdonald began to have her own feelings of bloodlust incited by the excitement of the hunt and the way it distracts her from her grief. So, although she describes Mabel’s coming into yarak as a demonic possession, this description reflects Macdonald, too. To escape her grief, she’s slowly going feral, aligning herself more and more with the power—and brutality—of the natural world.
Themes
One evening, Macdonald visits an art gallery in preparation for giving a talk about the exhibit. She expects sculptures or paintings. But instead she finds two unexpected elements. One is a full-scale replica of a California bird blind used to study condors. Guests can look through its window and see footage of the birds projected onto a gallery wall. The second is a stuffed Spix’s macaw, a species of parrot that has gone extinct in the wild, encased in a glass box. Macdonald gets antsy watching the video-projected birds; she prefers real birds. But, she realizes, that’s the point: these animals are precious mostly because they are disappearing (or have disappeared) from the wild.
In the art gallery, Macdonald’s personal losses and grief begin to map onto the broader losses and the bigger griefs of the natural world. The California Condors offer a hopeful conservation message, as they were brought back from the brink of extinction. But, as Macdonald discusses in this section of the book, that isn’t the same as turning back time and restoring them to their former glory. Living in the modern world means that we’re all living with a pervasive and inescapable sense of loss when it comes to the wild world. In this case, the past offers hopeful lessons—but also warnings—for the future.
Themes
Macdonald doesn’t like the fact that the rarer a creature is, the fewer meanings it can have. The condors have been flattened into a conservation message. And the dead parrot reminds her of seeing her father’s dead body in the hospital. She remembers starting to cry after a long, frozen moment of disbelief. She remembers telling her father’s body how much she loved him, squeezing its cold hand, and leaving the room.
While Macdonald appreciates conservation efforts, she’s careful to point out their limitations. Halting greater losses is a noble aim, but what has already been lost—the rich meanings and richer lives that rare animals used to have—cannot be recaptured. What is lost—whether that’s animal species, precious habitats, or loved ones who have died—cannot be recaptured, and the survivors must forge ahead despite their bereavement.
Themes
The day after the art gallery visit, Mabel chases a pheasant. It crashes into some underbrush, and Macdonald tries to flush it out. This is hard without an animal’s senses. Her intensity of focus burns the world away until she’s aware of just three essential things: herself, Mabel, and the invisible pheasant. When she flushes the game bird from the bracken, she feels the lines connecting it and her and Mabel converge. Afterward, as watches a contented Mabel enjoying her first real success, she realizes that her young bird has finally learned what she was made for.
Mabel’s joyful discovery of her hunting skill lightens the heavy mood of this chapter and reminds readers of why, in Macdonald’s view, the wild world is worth mourning and preserving. There is a beauty in the rightness to which Mabel is suited to the task of hunting, and a simplicity to her life which Macdonald envies. Unlike her human, Mabel knows what she’s for. She doesn’t suffer grief or loss—she simply does what nature intended for her to do.
Themes
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