{"id":2373,"date":"2013-07-08T07:05:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-08T07:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=2373"},"modified":"2013-07-08T07:21:17","modified_gmt":"2013-07-08T07:21:17","slug":"untethered-victoria-07072013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=2373","title":{"rendered":"Untethered – Victoria – [07\/07\/2013]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"OLYMPUS<\/a><\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve mentioned before, when I was a kid my parents took me to Medieval Times in California. I spent hours being mesmerized by swordfights and women in pretty dresses and truly beautiful horses. And the birds\u2026<\/p>\n

To fist! To fist and to feast! Ladies and gentlemen behold the sport of kings!<\/i><\/p>\n

I had never seen a falcon in flight before. I mean, I\u2019d never seen one sitting still either. And there was this woman in the middle of the arena, in the most beautiful cloak I\u2019d ever seen at that age, its edges trailing in the sawdust, and on her wrist was this absolutely magnificent bird. I had never seen anything like it.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t say I ever had a driving interest in the sport of falconry from that time on. But my mum says I always loved the birds, that my interest in them dates from then, and she\u2019s probably right. I don\u2019t remember that. I remember being in first year university and my best friend introducing me to the movie Ladyhawke<\/i>. Yeah yeah, it was the 2000 and Ladyhawke<\/i> is 80\u2019s fantasy at pretty much it\u2019s best, but I had somehow never gotten around to a lot of films I should have seen as a much younger person and Silv made it her personal mission to rectify that situation. Ladyhawke<\/i> was one of the first ones.<\/p>\n

That movie, cheesy as it is, brought my fascination with the \u2018sport of kings\u2019 back to the forefront of my mind. I started looking up courses, looking up schools, anything that could teach me more about these birds. Eventually I found there was a raptor education center on the island, but it was a good drive away and I am strictly a bus girl. Thankfully, I have friends and they have cars \ud83d\ude09 and a casual conversation one day revealed a mutual interest in the idea of at least taking a half day course (the week long course I eventually want is simply too much money at the moment).<\/p>\n

Bringing a falcon onto your wrist is something that\u2019s almost impossible to describe unless you\u2019ve done it. You think they\u2019re going to weigh more than they do, but they\u2019re exceptionally light which makes sense when you think about it as they do \u2013 after all \u2013 have to fly.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s truly amazing is how empathic these animals are, and how intuitive. Having a saker falcon on my wrist felt like an extension of my arm, she could read me, read my every motion. If I got nervous, she got nervous, if I was calm, she relaxed and just stayed perched there, feather\u2019s fluffed.<\/p>\n

They stay with us because we’re good hunting partners. We have their trust because we do right by them. They’re not pets, they’re not domesticated…they never will be. They can’t be.<\/em><\/p>\n

It felt\u2026natural. Not necessarily in the sense of \u2018I have done this before\u2019, but in the sense of \u2026it just felt\u2026like nothing I’d ever experienced before.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say this: the week long course doesn\u2019t seem such a ridiculous idea after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I\u2019ve mentioned before, when I was a kid my parents took me to Medieval Times in California. I spent hours being mesmerized by swordfights and women in pretty dresses and truly beautiful horses. And the birds\u2026 To fist! To … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vacation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-Ch","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2373"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2375,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373\/revisions\/2375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}