The joy of eagles

Today I am going to Mason Neck State Park and watch the Wildlife Center of Virginia release three bald eagles back into the wild. This occasion is historic. The first time in the 27 year history of the Center that they have released three eagles. This once-in-a-lifetime event reminded me of this extraordinary quotation from Herman Melville's Moby Dick.

"...and there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he forever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than the other birds upon the plain, even though they soar."
— Herman Melville

It's about time we remembered the eagle that lives in all of us and recapture that sense of amazing joy that visits us every day.