TUNGSTEN VALLEY - It was a cloudless day. Only avians lingered on the cerulean blue horizon. I sat in quiet repose after an afternoon yoga session in the Jackson House, my neighbor in our mountain valley of Tungsten.

It was then his feathered brunette body came into view.

A young osprey, a spectacular fishing bird, gracing us with his presence over Barker Reservoir. Instead of soaring over waters in search of trout, he was caught inexplicably, hanging upside-down, from the top of a forty-foot dead lodgepole pine.

His voice was silent, but his vulnerable situation pierced my heart. His eyes pierced my gaze. How many hours he’d been in his predicament was for him to know and me to never find out.

“I saw an eagle chasing two ospreys over the Reservoir this morning,” my friend Darroll Madaugh would later say.

In the moment of discovering my defenseless friend, I felt completely helpless. It felt like any other day in our own human predicament, fraught with peril and challenge. As with everyone else struggling to live well, I held no expectations of assistance or support.

The outcome was as uncertain as failing to act would be fatal.

In response to my calls, Madaugh, the City of Boulder’s manager tending Barker Dam, came down first. The pine was on City property, after all. He’d also know of more immediate law enforcement contacts. Thirty-two years of mountain living informed my sense of self-reliance and independence. I knew we were more or less on our own.

With that in mind, I called raptor rescues. “We can’t do rescues,” they apologized.

Hanging up, I then reached out with images and texts to close friends in my animal-loving community. They answered by showing up moments later with chainsaws, straps, crates and towels in hand. 

Very soon Madaugh drove past my husband hanging a “Welcome to our home, please drive mindfully,” sign at our valley gate. A convoy of rescuers sped past: Nandy Wentzel and her husband Dhafer Boudabbous, Mary and Burr Wilcox.

And then came two more animal-loving women from Boulder County Sheriff Animal Control: Michaela Krzensinski and Blakelee Brownd. 

“Hang in there baby!” I called up to him. “Help is on its way!”

Out of the trucks they poured: Men with chainsaws and brush trimmers. Women with the carriers and blankets in their arms. Together, we all began the work of cutting, pulling and dragging dead branches to clear the base of the tree. Some stood by watching, at the ready to pull, drag, and clear alongside.

My heart lightened with possibilities; my spirit basked in restorative human goodness.

“Wow, it’s impressive,” I heard Krzensinski remark. “Everyone's so prepared up here.”

All the while, watching the impromptu urgent effort to save his life, our young osprey friend stared down at his would-be rescuers.

“A little help here!” I heard him say.

Anyone remotely familiar with birds can readily understand the need for cautious planning. For all his majesty and regal dignity now turned upside-down, the rescue entailed necessary risk. If we injured his wings in the act of sawing down the tree, his existence would be in question.

Cool minds and calculating wisdom were needed to prevail.

Madaugh said, “I’ll go get the excavator. We'll brace it against the tree. I’ll wrap a strap around it, and you all can cut it at the back. We’ll lower it towards the ground slowly.”

Our tethered osprey friend stared down in concurrence.

We all stepped back. Madaugh cleared remaining deadfall and branches, while Burr and Mary Wilcox, Wentzel, Boudabbous, and I dragged it all away. Before I knew it, Madaugh climbed into the cab, easing it towards the tree.

In a circle we all stood, waiting as he raised the excavator blade thirty-five-feet above. As it met the tree, it sent the osprey into a frantic flutter of helplessness. He was silent, otherwise, above the turbulence of his rescue on the ground.

“He’s REALLY stuck,” remarked Mary Wilcox.

We all stood huddled together in a tapestry of helplessness interwoven with hope. We each felt a rush of joy and relief with each forward momentum, along with willingness to respond fully to the moment at hand. 

Darroll angled out of the cab, hoisting himself atop, reaching for silver tubes encasing cables on the excavator arm. He scaled the outreached arm, bent at a forty-five-degree angle, now raised twenty-five-feet in the air. As he climbed from the silver tubes onto the attached arm of the bucket, our osprey friend stared down in rapt attention.

“You’re an absolute hero!” Someone shouted.

“Don’t tell my boss!” He joked in response.

We all held our breath as he climbed the last leg onto the excavator bucket, pulled the strap from his back pocket, and wrapped it around the tree.

“You got it!” Called Burr Wilcox.

In as elegant a move as his ascent, Madaugh straddled back down the excavator arm. Our osprey friend watched, wings outstretched, some fifteen feet higher.

Burr Wilcox and Boudabbous fired up the chainsaw, cutting a V-shape in the back of the tree. Wentzel, Mary Wilcox, Krzensinski, and Brownd waited with outstretched blankets at the ready.

“We might have to bring him in, attached to the branch just like an episode of Grey’s Anatomy,” I remarked.  

Once safely back in the excavator cab, Madaugh reversed direction. The tree angled in alignment with the ground where relief awaited. In a heartbreakingly futile effort to fly off, our osprey friend flapped his wings. Whatever was tethering him to the tree was holding him tight. 

The moment turned again. He righted himself and perched on the branch, now horizontal. For the first time in hours, he was now upright.

It turned again, as he flailed and fell back upside-down.

Burr Wilcox, Krzensinski, and Brownd wrapped a towel gently around him like a doctor wrapping a newborn baby. Then the cause of his captivity came into clear view: fishing line.

When Krzensinski and Brownd cut him free, they placed him in the crate. Stunned and confused, he stared back from behind bars at his rescuers.

A Colorado Parks and Wildlife officer drove up.

“I’m so sorry I missed the whole thing. I was up in Loveland,” Cassy Penn apologized. 

“Let’s call him Lucky,” my husband said.

As with all injured wildlife, Lucky’s outcome is as tenuous as it is often unknown. An inquiry to Lucky’s temporary sanctuary, Birds of Prey Foundation, reaffirmed he’s in recovery. Remarkably, he suffered no injury to his wings.

“He hasn’t eaten yet today,” they offered. “But raptors in captivity are under stress, and don’t often eat. His foot is terribly sore.”

My own beleaguered spirit and aching heart feels reaffirmed and hopeful. We all need a win in this time of struggle—a majestic fishing raptor dangling helplessly upside-down, tethered lethally by the product of human negligence, or just an animal lover trying to live in a messy and mosaic, complicated, and intertwined world.