El Paso: A Hawk Swooped In

Hawk, Memorial Park, El Paso, Texas. August 2017.

August 2017


I was on my way to the Tumblewords Project at the library in Memorial Park. Beau Jocque was playing to me.

Through the top of my windshield, a dark shape swooped down and across the road and up to a tree on the left side of the road. I pulled over. Got my camera out.

It was a very large hawk. It landed on an outer branch toward the tree top, and peered down into the greenery.

Hawk, Memorial Park, El Paso, Texas. August 2017.

It hulked there. Like a member of local royalty who barged into the home of a subject, seeing what he might take for himself, because he could.

-- Or was that the story at all? The photo below suggests that .... maybe .... that was actually its home? I saw a small bird fly out from the tree, following the hawk. But in the photo above, I see an extended wing inside the branches and another bird flying away.

Hawk, Memorial Park, El Paso, Texas. August 2017.

I snatched a bit of video, which I unfortunately ended before he made his move and was subsequently chased out of by one of the diminutive owners of that small home.

So the mystery remains.

El Paso: Art in the Park - Manhattan Heights

Art in the Park, Memorial Park, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

October 2016.

El Paso's neighborhoods continue to delight me. Memorial Park and the Memorial Library branch of the El Paso Public Library System are in the historic neighborhood called Manhattan Heights.

The housing stock in Manhattan Heights is like a box of chocolates, with none of its contents being an icky chocolate-covered cherry (eww.) Each sweet morsel is a bite of eye-rolling goodness.

This is not to glamorize the neighborhood. The streets within the neighborhood reflect different socio-economic members, which, I believe, is part of what makes for a sustainable, inclusive community that we call a neighborhood. (A gated community is not a neighborhood. It is an enclave.)  A video in a Borderzine series on El Paso's neighborhoods addresses the diversity of blocks in Manhattan Heights. 

Regardless of the financial value of a particular house in Manhattan Heights, or the income of its residents within, all Manhattan Heights residents have equal access to the library, the park, the glorious views, the pleasant walks along the neighborhood streets. This is one of the characteristics of what "quality of life" means in a city.

A view of El Paso and Juarez from Manhattan Heights neighborhood, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

In the video below, taken from the Memorial Library's parking lot, a view of the neighborhood south of Manhattan Heights and Juarez:

In the background, you can hear musicians from the ongoing Art in the Park.