I love nature, the forest and the trees, the rivers and the ponds, but I’m not exactly an outdoorsy person – more a viewer from the banks and overlooks. Several times a year I go to the Piney woods in East Texas to visit a retreat center, but unlike the old days when we slept in tents or in the back of our SUVs, most of us now sleep indoors in the comfort of heating and air-conditioning, electric lights, and running water.
I took my kids to visit national parks when they were young, but no one would have earned a nature merit badge from the way we did it. Unlike some of my backpack camping friends, I drove my small orange Nissan truck with its cab-over camper. We slept inside, cooked on the tiny stove, and carried our own water supply and ice for the icebox. Roughing it a bit, but we were more like turtles or tortoises, taking our home with us.
Yet I know that, in spite of not liking “no see’ um bugs, mosquitoes and snakes, bees, wasps and other scary stinging creatures, my life goes better when I spend time in nature. It feels important to stay connected to the seasons and the rhythms of the natural world. Living on the Allegheny River here in Pittsburgh keeps me connected with some of my relations; the rabbits and the groundhog, the morning doves and the songbirds, occasionally, the hawk and the eagle. And the other evening, the blue heron, which has been my totem since, according to my husband, the herons only visited the pond in the park near our Texas home when I was there.
My friends and I were sitting on the back deck, on one of those rare summer evenings when the temperature is just right, and the moon is beginning to show its face in the sky. I looked over to the harbor, which runs along the side of our building, next to the “secret garden.” The secret garden is only a secret because it’s unmarked and the pavement doesn’t connect to it as the original plot design had suggested it would. So hardly anyone visits it. But our deck overlooks it and there, on top of a pole in the center of the harbor sat a resting blue heron.
I hadn’t seen one lately so it surprised me at first, but it surprised me more by how long it stayed. As the evening went on, it continued to sit alongside us, as though it were trying to overhear what we were saying. I snapped a picture and my friend Tony left and went outside to get a closer view and another photo, but the heron continued to sit. Though uninvited, the heron had come to dinner and the after-dinner conversation had not finished yet. Since it was my birthday, it seemed to know it’s clearly impolite to leave before the songs are sung, the candles are lit and blown out, and the birthday cake is served.
