H Is For Hawk

MacDonald faces frustration as she travels to the first session in which she plans to fly Mabel free. A terrible car accident impedes her way forward, and she snaps at Mabel and at the other passenger in the car. Getting to the location late, MacDonald is exhausted. Mabel ignores Stuart’s training kite and instead bates repeatedly. As evening falls, MacDonald makes the mistake of letting Mabel fly free at an inopportune moment. She circles for what seems to MacDonald like a long time and then settles on a tree. Finally, Mabel returns, and MacDonald is emotionally devastated.

She recalls White’s devastation when he’d learned that Gos had run away. White wrote that the experience was like death, “something too vast to hurt much or even to upset me” (173). Nevertheless, he puts out scraps of meat for Gos on the chance that he will return and scans the countryside waiting for his return. Worse, he occasionally sees Gos flying in the far distance, but cannot reach him.

As MacDonald prepares for a move, she revisits her parent’s house, and once again feels a wave of painful nostalgia for her father. She takes Mabel out to a nearby farm and lets her loose to hunt.