Local Author Writes of Eagles, Sporting Books

By “local” I mean all of southwest New Mexico and author Steve Bodio of Magdalena is a powerful voice herein and beyond. For more on Steve and his books visit his most excellent blog;  just google bodio blog querencia . . .

Writing “coaches,” faculty at writing conferences, and would-be authors with literary pretensions are forever counseling the less skilled among wordsmiths to “use your imagination” and to “write what you know.” This is generally good advice as imagination and what you know can easily combine to put a certain enthusiasm onto the printed page. And enthusiasm – if the author “translates” well to the reader—will if nothing else save a weak book from boredom. And it might render a good book into a classic.

Steve Bodio of Magdalena, Socorro County has a myriad of enthusiasms among his belongings. His voice carries, his eyes penetrate, and whether the subject is the survival of the planet or how to feed his pigeons, Bodio in person or on the printed page will capture your interest or even hijack your spirit if you don’t watch out. In the past year or so he has seen the publication of two more books, both vintage Bodio.

An Eternity of Eagles: The Human History of the Most Fascinating Bird in the World (Lyons Press, Guilford, CT, 2012, 212 pgs., $26.95 hardcover), is a volume the author was surely busting to write; eagles stir our imaginations and Bodio is intrigued by the quest.

“We need new ways of imagining the minds of the ‘other bloods’ with whom we share our world,” he writes. “Eagles contain power and intelligence in a body that weighs only twelve pounds. They appear and disappear like magic in seconds and can fall out of the sky to kill a one-hundred-pound antelope or a five-pound flying goose with no tools but the muscles of a hollow-boned body smaller than a child’s. Those talons exert a ton of pressure at their tips.”

Without so stating, Bodio seeks – and is close to realizing – the essence of the eagle. He’s on a roll…….

“Too many writers,” he says, “who write about animals either pretend to a scientist’s assumed ‘objectivity,’ using the passive voice and a deliberate flattening of affect to distance themselves from the subject on the page, or they anthropomorphize their protagonists…….”

“……I am human, and wish I could fly with eagles and, liberated to the air, hunt with them like a human mate – blowing down the wind like a thought, a shadow on furled wings, falling from the sky like a sentient thunderbolt to kill with my own suddenly powerful  hands. This wish to know, to understand, and even for a moment to be something different, something other than human, is an entirely human desire; an eagle would neither comprehend nor care. Our dreaming species lives within a larger context that predates us; it is one that needs us less than we need it.”

Bodio is not all dreams and speculations of course. There are long chapters on natural history of eagles (there are related sub-groups of sea eagles, snake eagles, hawk eagles and the Aquila group which includes the golden eagle, fairly common here in New Mexico and a superior hunter, even among eagles). And there is eagle hunting.

No, you can’t hunt eagles in the USA (certain Native American tribes have wrangled a controversial exemption) but people have been hunting with eagles for thousands of years, world wide. I was astounded to learn that eagles up to 20 lbs. have been used in big game hunting including the take of fox, coyote, wolf, deer and antelope. Bodio recounts hunts he attended in Central Asia. Most USA eagle falconry is for jackrabbit.

Profusely illustrated, mostly in color, An Eternity of Eagles is at once scholarly, informative, and inspired by the enthusiasm of its author.

 

Bodio has been busy; his second book of the year is out: A Sportsman’s Library: 100 Essential, Engaging, Off – Beat Fishing and Hunting Books for the Adventurous Reader (Lyons Press, Guilford, CT. 2013, 255 pgs, softcover, $18.95). A long-time book reviewer for Gray’s Sporting Journal and Fly Rod & Reel, Bodio is a bibliophile. He reports that when first presented with the idea of introducing readers to the 100 “best” sporting books of all time he had no trouble listing on a note pad some 130 titles drawn from the top of his head. And you can bet your last six-pack he’s read most of them.

Bodio is as effusive about good sporting books as he is about eagles. Each title, named and delivered, gets 2 to 3 pages of review coupled with a color photo of the cover. The selection process is necessarily arbitrary, but Bodio is nothing if not eclectic with his literary tastes and so there is something for everyone – venerable classics (The Art of Fishing with an Angle/Dame Juliana Berners, 1486); modern classics (Green Hills of Africa/Earnest Hemingway, 1935); books you’ve heard of and have probably read (Maneaters of Kumaon, 1946); books you’ve never heard of (Tales of a Rat Hunting Man/D. Brian Plummer, 1978).

As with the Eagle book, Bodio’s enthusiasm comes through on each page; he must have chuckled over the assignment; they would pay him to delve into his principle academic interest – books! He tells you what he likes and doesn’t like:

He likes Trout Bum by John Gierach. He quotes another well known fly fisher, Seth Norman, who commented on Gierach: “More often than not, the greatest appeal is the faith Gierach conveys to the reader that lets us think: I could do this.”

He likes Big Woods by William Faulkner – “America’s iconic hunting saga” – about a down in the dirt southern bear hunt, but doesn’t like the animal rights movement – “Where will the hounds go when all is forbidden?”

All said this is an astounding collection that only Steve Bodio could have produced; nobody else in my view could be as lively and cogent in his critique while digging up such a captivating list, from the venerable titles to the esoteric, otherwise lost to time. Of course there will always be quibbles with a list of the “best” since you can’t list them all; I would have included Harold Blaisdell’s Philosophical Fisherman among the angling books.

For that matter, I would have included one of Bodio’s own sporting books – Eagle Dreams: Searching for Legends in Wild Mongolia – in the review. Quibbles aside, A Sportsman’s Library is more than just a “good read;” it’s a service to literature.