@MJA,
Very cool.
I was walking in the deep woods one day down a narrow path. Everything was covered in a fresh blanket of snow and you could not tell the path from the floor of the forest. Snow hung from all of the evergreen branches and muffled the sound of everything so the air was silent.
I was wearing a completely white parka for camouflage as I was hunting and must have blended in quite invisibly with the surroundings.
As I walked slowly down the path I noticed movement on a branch overhanging the trail about ten feet up and some twenty feet ahead of me. It was the biggest white snow owl I have ever seen.
It saw my movement and I stopped, but because it could not make out my shape, all it saw was some motion and maybe a couple of dark spots in the snow. It wasn't sure if it had seen a mouse or rabbit move or not. I stared directly into its eyes and knew it was looking directly at me, trying to make sense of what it saw move. It leaned forward slowly, spread out its wings, which I swear must have been a full 6 feet across, and then just effortlessly rolled off of the branch, like taking off with a flying kite from the edge of a cliff, swooping toward me.
I realized it was coming in claws first to grab whatever was there, and I waved my gun in its face and hollered at it just in time as it swerved suddenly and disappeared into the whiteness.
It all seemed to happen in slow motion, one of the most spiritual moments I have ever experienced.
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