Artist’s Journal:

It is a chilly October day, and I am standing on a mountain made of human trash.

In this nightmarescape, I am meeting a hawk. The falconer holds her out for me to greet, and I consider briefly that this may be the right time for a quick curtsey.

I restrain myself.

This is royalty, for certain; but I am not her subject.

She rules this mountain by keeping at bay the feathered pestilence: the gulls of the garbage heap. Hungry and numerous, they circle in quickly, looking for spoiled digestible treasures between plastic bags and broken toys. Their own waste becomes a slick surface on the mountain until the rains come, and wash this toxic excrement down into the groundwater.

The hawk knows her role. She flies in wide circles over the landscape. She is ready to chase, to frighten, and to kill. This is a hawk being its awesome self: a predator right down to its hollow bones.

The gulls are undaunted. They fly away when she arrives in the falconer’s truck. They bide their time. They return when she is gone. They learn her schedule. They learn her vehicle. The humans adapt, changing up their timing. The gulls learn fear again. It is an endless crusade.