Saving Hawks and Saving Addicts

Brain Pickings is one of my favorite sites for inspiration and introductions to writers, thinkers and doers I know and many I never heard of.
It is free and is the passion project of Maria Popova who sustains and supports the site with our patronage. It is a generous gift to all of us seekers.
This week I almost skipped over what turned out to be the most fascinating article: the woman who saved the hawks: redeeming an overlooked pioneer of conservation. I am not particularly interested in conservation, hawks or a woman whose mission was to save them but I was drawn to her by the description that she was experiencing a “postpartum hollowing of spirit that follows the completion of any project into which one has poured all of oneself.” I recognized the feeling.
The woman was Rosalie Edge, an activist in the women’s suffrage movement into which she had poured all of herself. Her work was done with the passage of the 19th amendment in 1929.Maria Popova continued...” a person of passion and brilliance is never bored for long” and Rosalie Edge happened upon an article revealing ties between the Audubon Societies and the gun and ammunition manufacturers that withheld protection from the bald eagle and several other species, giving hunters permission to slaughter them.
She began attending Audubon society meetings, standing up in protest. She became known as a scold, a nuisance. So she persevered! She borrowed 500.00 to buy a mountain and several thousand more to purchase a 1400 acre wilderness and the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary was born from her deep need to conserve and preserve the beauty of nature, even the beasts who were not thought to be worthy of preservation.
So on the surface, preserving hawks and saving addicts don’t seem to be connected, I feel a strong connection to the unknown woman for her passionate need to right a wrong and her perseverance in sustaining her mission.

For the full article on Maria’s website, see here: The Woman Who Saved the Hawks: Redeeming an Overlooked Pioneer of Conservation