This morning, cycling from Brackley Beach to Covehead
Harbour, in Prince Edward Island National Park, I found an eagle feather in the
grass on the edge of the trail. My wife spotted it, and I went back and picked
it up. It’s a wing feather, dark gray, with a tiny patch of white at the base.
I treasure it. It brings to mind the scene in Ian Frazier’s great On the Rez (2000), in which Le War
Lance, one of my favorite characters in all of literature, gives Frazier an
eagle feather:
He was wearing a gray felt cowboy hat with a tall, uncreased
crown and an eagle feather hanging from the back on a buckskin thong. He took
off the hat and untied the eagle feather and handed it to me. He said it was a
present for my son, then only a month or two old. We shook hands, and I wished
him luck. He said as soon as he had gotten himself some Chinese food he would
catch the next bus home. On the subway back to Brooklyn, three people asked me
about the eagle feather. A black man in an Indian-style choker necklace made of
pipe beads asked if I would be interested in selling it. I smiled and said no.
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