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Walter Van Tilburg Clark (1909-1971) http://tinyurl.com/WClark

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Master of the Sky

From Hook, 1940.

Reader: Kevin Hearle

A long familiar site in the skies above California are red-tailed hawks, soaring aloft with effortless—-and enviable—-grace. Such predators have inspired the imagination of more than a few California writers, but it was a Nevadan who gave us a fully imagined portrait.

Few fiction writers have written as well about the natural world as Walter Van Tilburg Clark, who grew up in Reno. In his 1940 story "Hook," Clark took the point of view of a red-tailed hawk living along the Big Sur coast.

A view of the Big Sur coast including the Bixby bridge. Larger.

Throughout that summer and the cool growthless weather of the winter when the gales blew in the river canyon and the ocean piled upon the shore, Hook was master of the sky and the hills of his range. His flight became a lovely and certain thing, so that he played with the treacherous currents of the air with a delicate ease surpassing that of the gulls. He could sail for hours searching the blanched grasses below him with telescopic eyes, gaining height against the wind. At the swift passage of his shadow within their vision gophers, ground squirrels, and rabbits froze, or plunged gibbering into their tunnels beneath matted turf. Now, when he struck, he killed easily in one hard-knuckled blow. Occasionally, in sport, he soared up over the river and drove the heavy and weaponless gulls downstream again, until they would no longer venture inland.

Walter Van Tilburg Clark is probably best remembered for his 1940 novel The Ox-Bow Incident, a compelling meditation on mob mentality set in nineteenth century Nevada.