Common Black Hawk
Assigning meaning to birds again. This isn't really about Common Black Hawks, more about what it meant to see them. Longer than usual.
I try not to write about this too often.
My life was interrupted, derailed by a traumatic brain injury. It’s more on track after derailment—not enough in my view. A support group for younger people living with traumatic brain injury is aptly called “Interrupted Lives.”
For an old job, I’d read college students’ essays aloud, point out ways they could improve their writing. I’d quote Strunk & White, a phrase my father drilled into my head as a boy: Omit needless words. Reading aloud put needless words into evidence.
I’m out of breath. Long sentence. Where could you break it up?
It felt good to see students improve.
A month ago your sentences were long. Now they’re concise, lengths vary. Great work.
It also felt better than I realized at the time to effortlessly read aloud. Never went back to that job, can’t read aloud so effortlessly. Those few fateful seconds changed everything.
Most people don’t understand traumatic brain injury. There’s much to understand. I knew nothing until I gained firsthand knowledge.
Some see survivors and think we’re done recovering. They look fine. It’s been years. Recovery from brain injury doesn’t necessarily end. It’s an invisible injury.
Traumatic brain injuries are wide-ranging, which compounds confusion. Concussion is a mild TBI. As with all TBI, some concussions are worse than others.
I got a concussion when I boxed for a season in college. Working as a research assistant at the time, it became challenging to critically read old castaway fiction—my job. Unca Eliza Winkfield, James Dubourdieu, Ibn Tufayl.
Now I have a different TBI. Have, not had. I will always have this—present tense. Diffuse axonal traumatic brain injury to my frontal lobe. When I explain it’s different than concussion, I feel I’m downplaying concussion. That’s not my intention. Concussions are not nothing, just different.
The Marine veteran driving instructor who medically cleared me to drive again had sustained many concussions, knew about diffuse axonal injury. He recognized the tracheotomy scar on my throat, complimented my discipline in recovery. His driving assessment: No restrictions, no limitations, full abilities.
Diffuse axonal injury is “one of the most severe types of traumatic brain injury.” Just shy of two and a half years have passed. Long by some standards, not TBI ones.
After two years, just half of those with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury drive again, with modifications if needed—steering knobs, hand controls for gas/brake. I was fortunate to be cleared after 15 months. April 2023, about a week before my 30th birthday. No modifications, just an eyepatch until surgery.
Flint Rehab explains:
In the past, many doctors and health professionals believed that two years of improvements were all a person could expect to gain after a TBI. However, recent research has challenged that idea and we now know that you can still activate neuroplasticity years, and even decades, after a brain injury.
I look fine, spend lots of time undoing remnants of injury-induced “atrophy” with vanity-induced “hypertrophy.” It’s helped me regain what I lost, then some.
Despite physical improvement, I’m not fine. Emotionally, I am severely more depressed and anxious. Depression and anxiety after brain injury is common. My self-confidence is at an all-time low.
I’m hard on myself. People notice. You’re pretty hard on yourself, a doctor remarked at our first appointment. Double-edged sword. I’ve recovered well because I’m hard on myself; I make myself miserable because I’m hard on myself.
I sustained the TBI when an 18-wheeler hit the rental car I was driving on a birding trip to the Everglades in January 2022. I was making a left turn at a notorious intersection. Wasn’t at fault. Had I been, I’d be unable to sleep—have a hard time as it is.
Before the wreck, I hoped for a Snail Kite. Only found in Florida in the U.S., they “inhabit most suitable wetlands near the Everglades.” I came to associate birding trips and rental cars with the event that interrupted my life.
Some aspects of myself were essentially lost, will take significant time, work, practice and patience to keep getting back. You lost everything, commented the doctor who said I’m hard on myself. Fly fishing and drumming; writing by hand; tying flies and whittling. Luckily I can still type and haven’t lost my birds.
I used to double haul and dump fly line from shore to striped bass. Now a fly cast, accelerating to a stop, feels less smooth. Ten and two to a four-count rhythm, it’s oversimplified in A River Runs Through It.
I’ve caught fish on the fly since, am noticeably less adept. It’s different enough that it’s less enjoyable. Something I do because I know I would’ve been doing it, not because it brings me joy the same way. I fish far less than I did.
Might be time to pivot to freshwater for fish I only need to cast 40 feet to—but on an oceanside walk with a friend, I wished I’d brought a fly rod. Clouds of baitfish were so thick.
You can’t just erase passion. Still might be time, for now, to trade the 9-weight for my fiberglass 4, a big Lefty’s Deceiver for a size 16 Perdigon or an even smaller zebra midge. Small flies, light tippet—harder knots for fine motor than a non-slip loop connecting a 2/0 Beastmaster to 20 lb. fluorocarbon.
My fishing buddy wants to go for small-stream brookies. The most memorable trout I’ve caught were with him. I’d like to fish a spot we know for sea-run brook trout—built a rod years ago specifically to fish there. A downside of fishing less is I see him less.
For a while I worried I’d lose birding because of TBI-related vision issues. Thankfully I haven’t. To an eye doctor, I explained I try to make things difficult for my eyes “as exercise.” It doesn’t work that way with vision, she said.
It was important to me that birding new regions wouldn’t be lost. I wanted to drive a rental car to bird an unfamiliar area, just as I had been when this happened.
Coincidentally, I drove in pursuit of another raptor only found in a specific part of the country. Common Black Hawk. The Cornell Lab explains:
In the U.S., Common Black Hawks can be hard to find. Look along wooded streams of remote canyons of the Southwest—or travel to Mexico or Central America, where the species is much more common and occurs in mangrove forests, swamps, and marshes.
I was in Arizona. The trail was “Black Hawk Trail.” It was lined with informational signs about Black Hawks, tree species, cuckoos, warblers, woodpeckers.
In the parking area before leaving, a birder asked, Did you see a Black Hawk? I told him I had. Vermillion Flycatcher and Summer Tanager too—neither an adult male, no vibrant reds. He said I probably wouldn’t see a Black Hawk anywhere else.
Seeing a Common Black Hawk felt redemptive. I assign meaning to birds. Sometimes they also get songs.
The Common Black Hawk got a few. “Hearts Racing,” The Bones of J.R. Jones. These birds made my heart race. “My blood is pumpin’ / A hundred miles an hour.”
“Old Before Your Time,” Ray LaMontagne. I feel old, defeated. Since 2022 life’s been different than I hoped or planned. The end of my 20s, start of my 30s. I also worry too much what others might think. Say what you will about David Foster Wallace, but I think of his quote each day, “you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.”
I had these two songs on repeat to the point they felt in conversation. The Bones of J.R. Jones: “We’re still young enough / Not to give a damn anyhow.” I’d listen to Ray, think of the hawk, mourn these years, feel old—then The Bones of J.R. Jones would remind me I’m not that old, shouldn’t give a damn.
I tried not to give a damn about anything but some hawks.
After I saw them, I put on Houndmouth’s “Sedona.” That’s where I was. As it played, I thought: You saw Common Black Hawks! Things are not so bad.
Sedona is “regarded as a place both sacred and powerful.” It’s known for its vortices, “swirling centers of energy that are conducive to healing.” I’m loath to admit this, but I wanted to heal. If nature and birds can heal, why not a vortex?
These years have clarified how little I truly control. I threw my hands up to the landscape: I’ll do all I can, but don’t think I can do it all. I’m here for help. Jeffers comes to mind. “The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those / That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant.”
I’m not religious, but wasn’t too “arrogant” to light a candle and sit at the Chapel of the Holy Cross. Felt good, but didn’t beat watching Common Black Hawks soar.
Desire to see a Snail Kite is gone. Very cool bird, extremely bad associations.
Now I’ve seen a Common Black Hawk. I feel more kinship with a Black Hawk anyway. If Northern Pintail feel like “my duck,” Common Black Hawks, at that moment, felt like my hawks.
It’d be easy to remain afraid of driving rental cars to bird. The accident itself didn’t traumatize me, my brain wasn’t able to make memories of it. Just the years of aftermath.
2022 was spent largely in hospitals. Inpatient a couple months, regaining consciousness and cognizance. After discharge, outpatient rehab. PT relearning to walk, going up stairs, rebuilding balance. OT picking up small metal pieces, using an upper body ergometer, testing reflexes on a simulator to return to driving. Speech doing tongue twisters, testing cognition, reading aloud.
In 2023 I was medically cleared to drive with an eyepatch. I worked a seasonal, physical job with people who’ve known me for years—a version of PT. Then worked on a farm.
Got my first eye surgery toward the end of that year. Left eye. My second surgery was February 2024. Right eye. My third is June 6. One more muscle. Third time’s the charm, they say.
2024 feels like the first year I get to make matter the way I want. That’s why I’m counting birds. Added Common Black Hawk and other species to my life list.
That’s not to say this year is devoid of the injury. I am continuing speech therapy. My speech is worlds better, but remains my biggest post-injury insecurity.
With an excellent speech therapist—and I’ve seen quite a few—first we focused on voice production, not clearing my throat so much. As recommended, I drink Throat Coat Tea in the evenings. Now: breath and articulation, comfort over the phone. Voicemails I left about scheduling have become useful comparison tools. Therapies come down to work you do on your own, but proper guidance is truly invaluable.
2024 and years hence will be about moments like one I just had. I was able to speak, clearly and confidently, with the person taking my blood for bloodwork.
Freewheeling conversation about tattoos and her daughter’s art. After taking blood, she brought me to another room to proudly show her daughter’s drawings. I smiled all the way back to my truck. I hope my life comes to feature more moments like that—good, normal, uncomplicated by brain injury.
Recovery from TBI is a long journey. It might never be truly behind me. I’m constantly reminded of it—my right foot, that leg, whenever I use my eyes (always), speak, tie shoes, sign anything, shake a hand. The list is long, but symptoms keep getting better. Cognitively I feel unchanged, miraculously. Would do multiplication tables and recite Robert Frost in my head when inpatient. Self-administered “tests.”
If you’ve suffered a TBI you can always improve. I absolutely believe that. It’s taken over two years to be able to stand on one leg at a time to put on jeans without losing balance, to comfortably drink from a mug of coffee held in my right hand.
Anxiety, self-doubt, depression—which I already had—increased. I’ve sought medication I’d always been too proud to take. Before prescribing it, the doctor asked why I’d been averse. Semi-jokingly, I answered: toxic masculinity.
At this point of recovery, we’re far past strictly spending time doing PT or OT. I do those things, but less stringently. I’m at the odd confluence of still getting better while living how I’d like.
I get to have a pleasant conversation with a hospital employee about her daughter’s art, walk to my truck smiling and drive away. I get to disregard vestigial elements of an inhibitory mindset to get the help I need. I get to drive a rental car in Arizona to see Common Black Hawks.
In short, I get to feel like a person—while navigating recovery’s remainder. We’re getting there, slowly but surely.
Praying for you, congrats on all your achievements! Be careful about the meds, especially if used more than briefly- they may cause the very problems they were originally taken to relieve. This is the case with many drugs, for example, opioids- which eventually cause pain.
God is real and He is Love. If you ask Him and seek the truth, you will find Him, because He wants to be found. He created and holds everything, but He hides from us in order to give us a true choice, a free will. Seek Him like you sought the black hawk He made. And don’t settle for an ambiguous sighting. Then you will know a deeper healing and hope. God bless you!
Oh my, James, of course I had no idea you had endured all this. I'm sorry. Thank you so much for writing so beautifully about it. It's a powerful story, but I like the way you spool it out, bringing the birds in as you go. (Thank God for birds!) I hope you will continue to write about this. Such hard work you're doing and I really applaud you. I understand the "being hard on yourself" part, but I find, too, like Wallace, that it's less about them and more about me. Still: hard.
Do you ever make it to the Vineyard these days?