A Little Bit Of Wildness
Thursday, August 17, 2006
[Photo: Lightmatter_greatblueheron2 by LIGHTmatter Photography By Aaron Logan]My friend Judy and I watched one of the herons feed for over an hour last night. I noticed they’ll wade and fish close to humans but if you try to inch your way to a better view they’ll often take flight.
I’m tempted to go to the Horicon Marsh for a rookery tour but I know herons are somewhat common and I’m afraid to lose the special feeling I have around these visitors. The magic is looking up from your ordinary urban day and meditating on a little bit of wildness. A flash of eye. A balance beam pose. One minute they're scrawny and turkey-like; the next, purposeful, drawn back like a bow and arrow. They’re not all that attractive. They’re gawky. And when they fly they look like Howard Hughes’s Spruce Goose.
But that beak is suggestive of prehistory, like an ancient bifacial tool. You don’t find a tool like that at The Home Depot. If these birds weren’t here before us they sure look prepared to survive long after we’re gone. I take comfort in that. For me it’s some at least momentary antidote to the moronic inferno.
The Washington Post reports today there is no bomb in a
But their close competitors have also mapped the undiscovered country of the undiscovered country. People Magazine yesterday boasted an exclusive, as Jennifer Anniston revealed “I am not engaged and I don’t have a ring and I haven’t been proposed to.”
I’d like to report that I did NOT do 1000 push-ups today as I’d planned.
When the smaller of my two herons wades in the pond she comes up with a morsel every time she dips into the water. I really love watching that.
