Years ago, I found myself drinking single-malt Scotch with a small group of raptor enthusiasts on a remote island off the coast of Maine. One of them had been Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s roommate at boarding school, where the two had apparently developed a shared obsession with falcons. He had stories to tell, but I’d rather not get sued. Besides, it’d also piss off a lot of falconers.
This past spring, I joined a couple hundred falconers about a dozen miles from downtown Boise, Idaho. We gathered at the Archives of Falconry, a low-slung building perched on a hill with a commanding view of the valley and the snow-capped mountains beyond. You could also see the treeless new housing developments crawling out from the city’s outskirts. A depressing sight.
The Archives holds the largest collection of falconry-associated items in the world. It also organises an annual gathering of falconers who, this year, came from Britain, Canada and across the US. We call it a “rendezvous”, a nod to the Old West and the annual meet-ups of trappers, hunters and traders who exchanged furs and pelts for supplies and companionship after a lonely year in the wilderness. The rendezvous’ centrepiece is a moving outdoor ceremony where people stand up and reminisce about falconers who died that year and whose names have been added to the Wall of Remembrance.
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