Eye on the Sparrow

Eye on the Sparrow

The young man regained consciousness with his head throbbing.  He was spread eagle over a smooth rock face jetting out over a canyon far below which seemed like it went on forever.  Had he not been concussed, he would have been enthralled at the view from his perch with subtle hues melting into the sharp contrast of towering saguaro cacti. He felt the back of his head and the golf ball size bump on the right occipital part of his skull.  His initial attempt to sit up produced a stabbing pain in his right upper torso which was accentuated with each breath.  He leaned back down on the hot rock and heard a crack in his spine.  He tried to stand up but could only make it up on his knee. His right ankle was swollen and was not going to take his weight.  Suddenly, with the change of position his head stopped pounding and his back felt better.  He took a deep breath without pain and his spit blood.  He felt his lip and it was cut.  He must have bit it in the fall. 

The place was Sabino Canyon in the Santa Catalina Natural Area near Mt. Lemmon northeast of Tucsan, Arizona. His mission was to collect water samples from Lemmon creek.  He had fallen from a height of 35 feet.  The strange thing was he didn’t remember anything.  Not the hike, his purpose, where he was, or even who he was.  From his injuries he surmised that he must have fallen and landed on this rock.  He looked down and became dizzy.  Good thing this rock face stopped his fall because it was a long way down, maybe 400 feet.  He looked up to see the edge of the cliff overlooking the canyon.  What was he doing up there?  He had no idea.  However, he had a vague notion that he was running away from something or maybe someone?  He wasn’t sure.  He tried to think but his head started hurting again. He had to lie down. As he felt the afternoon sun radiating off the rocks surrounding him, he thought about the most important question. Who am I?

He was terrified. Reaching into his pockets he had no wallet or identification.  Everything he had, including the vile of water, his papers from the Department of Natural Resources, everything except for a pocket knife was in a backpack on the bottom of the canyon.  Gravity was ruling the day. He thought he must be suffering from amnesia.  He rubbed the back of his head and began to look for a way off the rock.  There was no immediate way.  The way up was impossible without ropes and the way down was dangerous with his injuries.  The five by eight foot rock had a slight decline toward the edge which made him feel uneasy.  He did not like heights.  It was clear though that there was no way off. Not the sides either.  That would be like stepping off a building.  “Shoot, I’m stuck,” he said out loud, but he did not feel unsafe because this rock was not going anywhere.

Slowly a feeling of dread crept into his consciousness.  He wasn’t sure if he was in immediate danger or if there was something about himself that should be wearing on him, but he couldn’t remember.  It was as if his entire memory banks had been wiped clean except for this ominous feeling of dread.  He hated it!  His breathing started quickening and he felt a surge of adrenaline. He knew panic was a bad response to his predicament so he tried to calm himself by slowing his breathing and leaning back against the warmth of the rock.  He looked out over the canyon and saw the sun at about 8 o’clock high in the summer sky.  He had about an hour of daylight.  The view of the horizon allowed him to feel a ray of hope although he wasn’t sure what to call it.  Well if not hope, then a reprieve from the terrible dread feeling?

He checked his pockets again and came up with a handkerchief and a card in his breast pocket that had five words on it.  You are not your own.  “What the heck does that mean,” he blurted.  He tried to stand up again and this time he succeeded on one leg.  “You are not your own.”  These words he spoke and they sounded familiar but he could not come up with any coherent thoughts about them. He leaned back against the rock wall and felt the weight come off his back.  In the distance, away from the sunlight looking north he saw a small wisp of smoke rising from the canyon floor. There is someone down there!  “Help!”, He called out with a weak cry.  His second attempt brought back an echo that gave him a feeling that he had accomplished something.  He wondered if anyone was looking for him.

His calling seemed to give him some energy but he was quickly taken aback.  An ominous red headed turkey vulture flew right by him with an eye pointed 90 degrees at him.

He shivered without being cold.  The large bird flew in slow swinging circles and lifted up on the thermals of the wind.  The male vulture reappeared in front of his view.  He called out again, “Help!” this time louder.  Again the echo resounded.  He took out the three inch blade and wondered if he could use it to protect himself. The temperature was going down with the sun.  There was a light in the canyon where the smoke curled up earlier.  As darkness crept over the rock, the beleaguered survivor curled up in a ball with his back against the wall on his left side, holding his head and resting his right ankle on top of his left.  He fell fast asleep.

The man awoke in the night with a powerful thirst and the need to take care of business.  He stood up on one foot, turned to the side and relieved himself.  He thought it’s always darkest before the dawn.  Looking up he witnessed the most brilliant star lights he’d ever seen, but he didn’t recognize them as constellations, only welcomed light because the light down in the canyon was gone. 

As if right on time, the birds started their singing and it appeared to him that their chorus made the rocks lighter.  His back was up against the wall which supported him on one leg.  His head hurt less when he was erect so he slid down into a sitting position.  The movement down created a sensation of vertigo.  His ankle pounded and he felt like he was coming apart.  The feeling of dread which now seemed more like emptiness rapidly overtook him as the new day made its appearance on the other side of the canyon. But almost simultaneously so did an electric light along with hope that appeared in the form of the familiar smoke signal as he had seen before.

He started in with his help message, now at various intervals.  He thought he had not tried hard enough yesterday and wondered if his voice carried his prayer far enough.  Suddenly, three vultures swooped down for a look at their prey.  They circled back and forth for several minutes and the man yelled warnings at them.  They were not deterred at his change of vocals.  Suddenly, a flurry of dive bombers in the form of sparrows made the vultures abandon their flight pattern.

He was so grateful for the little brown birds that he cried out in jubilation. So what if their mission was to protect their babies in their nests.  Then an odd thought came to him.  His eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me.  Where did that come from?  Who is He?  Who am I?  These questions set off a chain reaction in his brain that exploded into a fit of weeping.  He felt so cold and in need of being saved.  The sunlight splashed against the whole wild wide world on the other side of his existence. 

Suddenly, a rope flew across and down.  It was the proverbial rope, a red rope, a life line.  A not so unfamiliar voice from somewhere above, spoke softly to his soul.  “Philip!”

What he didn’t know was his rescue was set in motion late last night when Philip’s wife Grace called the authorities worried about why he was not answering his phone.  Her sleepless vigil was kept with friends who helped mobilize a crew from U of A to track down all the possible leads; the hikers on the Sabino Canyon Road who recognized him and identified his direction, and the elderly birder who lived in a small cabin with a smoking fireplace who heard a distress call, to the ranger with a powered telescope who spotted a man sitting on a rock ledge, to the two rescuers who repelled easily down the 35 feet with their first aide gear.

Philip March was a 23 year old graduate student in Microbiology from the University of Arizona. He would soon to remember everything with the help of his wife and friends.  He was trained and accustomed to looking deeply at the small things in life through the eye of a microscope.  Now for this brief harrowing time Philip was propelled into a story that would allow him to look deeply and widely, outside of himself, his work, and at his relationship with ….well, he wasn’t sure yet. 

“Philip, are you Philip March?” The rescuer landed lightly on the rock and began to assess the condition of the hiker with initial visual and simultaneous verbal inquires.  Philip could only breathe and watch the skill of the rescuer since he seemed so out of place, like he was in the middle of a dream. Philip finally said, “I don’t know, but I know I need help.  Thank you for coming for me.”  The rescuer told Philip that there were a lot of concerned people, including his wife waiting at the end of the Sabino Canyon Road.  Philip looked out over the canyon as he felt his body being raised to the top of the canyon.  He was thinking, “I am not my own.”  Thank goodness. He smiled and began to think about his discoveries that were going to happen this day.  He needed mending and he needed to find out who he was.  He wanted to know the person whose eye is on the sparrow.

The End