Great Blue Heron

Great Blue Heron wrapped in blue
October 15, 2002
Sony Cybershot

I'm in a bit of a creative slump. Nothing seems to interest me these days, photographically speaking. This will pass - it always does. Once we settle into something or some place and joy is found again I will feel free to breathe, create. The need to get out into the world will overtake me and away I'll go, cameras beside me as always. Although the cameras are always in the navigator position these days, nothing seems to draw them out of the case.

The river is on my mind these days, you see. That dynamic, fluid artery of Life that dawns daily with gifts. This morning I'm missing the herons. I'd begun to take them for granted, herons, as they're so ubiquitous. Always squawking about something, landing hither and yon, flying back and forth, perching in trees and on docks and on riverbanks. We've witnessed heron fights and heron love, herons dining and herons floating upon the waters, herons reposing in treetops and herons striking Gandhi-like poses on the bows of barges that thrum by our house.

Great Blue Herons can be found everywhere from the placid waters of huge city parks to turbulent waters of river dams in the middle of nowhere. They are the great adapters, herons. They don't whine about their conditions but simply adapt. Most of nature does this. Great Blue Herons are my inspiration to do likewise.

So today I offer you a Great Blue Heron wrapped in the gentle blue of a rainy morning on the river along with a poem by Kathleen Jamie that I really like. May the peace of both scene and poem stay with you.

The Heron
by Kathleen Jamie

  We are flying, this summer's night
  toward a brink, a wire-thin
  rim of light. It swells,

  then, as we descend,
  illuminates the land enough
  to let us name, by hill, or rivermouth,

  each township below. This is
  the North, where people, the world perhaps
  likes to imagine,

  hold a fish in one hand,
  in the other: a candle.
  I could settle for that. We shudder

  and roll toward a standstill at the far end of the runway.
  --It's not day, this light we've entered,
  but day is present at the negotiation.

  Gloaming--the sky holds
  the still pale grey of a heron, watchful
  among the tide-pools of the shore.