“I believe! I believe!” Ohana called out to me and began the story, elaborated further here by Windsong.
They began their ceremony by making a small altar on the gravel bar next to the water at Ti’lomikh Falls, when Lindy and Ry joined them. Each person held tobacco in their hands to pray with. At 1:22:22, they sang the Cherokee Morning Song in unison with people on Mount Ashland and Mount Shasta, activating The Osprey’s Path, and then after a long pause, continued to pray silently with the tobacco. All stayed in prayer, as one by one, each of them did their individual prayer with the tobacco, and offered it to the river. As the fourth person completed their silent prayer, offering their tobacco to the river as the others had done, an Osprey flew from down river, and hovered high in the sky above them over the river, facing them, looking directly at them, and flapping it’s wings towards them. It then began doing aerial maneuvers, stopping in mid-flight, wings outspread, flapping and hovering, looking right down directly at them, as if to say “Hi, Yay! you are here and we are here together!” After about 10 minutes it went back downriver.
Filled with happiness and reverence, they gathered up their things, and as they were about to leave, an Osprey flew again from downriver, first casting its shadow over Ohana and then, Windsong, Lindy and Ryan, so they looked up to see it zooming about ten feet above them. When Ohana told this, he laughed and said he felt it was like the Osprey landed on his head.