My Friend the Heron

At 5a.m., I went down the stairs, my faithful Jack Russell by my side.

Well, ahead of me, actually. Tripping me up is one of his favorite games in life.

Like me, Mr. Pip has never met a meal he didn’t like.

After voraciously wolfing down his breakfast, he stepped outside for his morning constitutional. He loves his new fenced yard at the river house.?The bushes are just his size.?

Outside the door, all was light and shadow.

At once evocative and mysterious, it was a perfect morning for a mystic like me.

Fallen leaves circled the yard, etched in frosty lace.

Our temperatures have been erratic. Climate change is here. One night it’s 55, the next 27, then back to the fifties again.

Stark outlines rose from the riverbank.

Leafless limbs slipped in and out of the mist that rises from the river here in the Great Smoky Mountains.

The full moon and the dawn

were fighting for ownership of the day.

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It was hauntingly beautiful.

Like film noir or the original version of Hound of the Baskervilles, where danger and beauty sit side by side.

Lost in thought, I sipped coffee on the screened-in porch,

until the cry of a great heron shattered the quiet.

She’s my new friend!

A she-haint whose perch is a limbless tree across the river.

We greet the morning together.

We’re both older and wiser women, so it’s a fitting beginning to the day. You could say we understand things about each other.

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I just moved here.

She ran her mate off.

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It’s sad, since she may still be in love.

He’s a handsome big fellow. She may, possibly, still be in love. I say possibly because I read that herons do not mate for life.

The males must prove themselves again each year in heron-land.

What a fascinating idea! But for now, there’s simply not enough food for both of them so she ran him off.

She shrieks a primordial call,

then abandons her perch to move gracefully across the river, like a toned woman riding a long-necked glider. I’m excited to see her! I throw my arms out and sing “Good morning beautiful!” Which I’m pretty sure amuses her since my outstretched arms must look like a child’s against her six and a half foot wingspan.

Mr. Pip is terrified of her.

He totally understands that she could carry him off to the rookery in her enormous talons, which would be awful, because he’s afraid of heights. He’s seen her swallow a trout, so he sits as silent as a statue when she’s alight.

But he's in luck. Today, she's hunting the last of the frogs.

Saving the river trout for another day, she joins me below the porch at the water’s edge. I sip coffee. She stands motionless on a long gray rock, eyes fiercely pinned on a muddy place at the shoreline.

Then POW! Out goes her neck.

In a lightning-fast move, her head disappears into a cluster of frosted fern, and reappears just as quickly with breakfast clutched in her long thin beak.

The frog's legs pump uselessly.

She flies him to the rookery, her takeoff powered by the unfolding of long, thin legs.

It's over. Once there, she swallows him whole.

Pip watches, still as a statue.

Silence returns.

Only the soft whispers of the river current fill the air. There is no more squirming, just fuel for another day.

We enjoy one another.

My hair stands on end at the sound of her call, and she rather enjoys my singing.

When I first looked at the house, I saw a heron on the backsplash.

I’ve always admired herons when I’ve seen them at the seashore or watched them fishing in a lake.

But I had no idea this house came with its own river queen.

Until the day I was talking to the home inspector and saw her great shadow glide over the river.

I ran to the window! I was so excited!

A heron! Here, in my new place? I was thrilled—the home inspector was dumb founded. Hadn’t I heard what he said about the toilet?

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For God's sake man, who cares about a toilet

when I have my very own heron?!

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It was hard to get to know her.

Her wings are so quiet that, if she does not announce herself, you won’t know she is there.

The first few times she came, I didn’t know she was there.

That's how quiet she was. I had an odd sensation that I was being watched.

I WAS being watched.

She had flown in on silent wings and was quietly observing me from the tree next to the porch. My every move was suspect. (Given the motives of many humans, I find that completely understandable.)

She was wary, so our friendship developed slowly.

It took weeks for her to begin calling out; to let me know she was home for the night, or that she was up and ready for breakfast.

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To be watched by a wild thing is to find out

many things are greater than you.

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If you catch them in the act,

it will take your breath away.

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Like that foggy morning a few years ago,

when I nonchalantly tossed my trash in the bin and flipped around to go back to the house only to realize that a black bear was standing there. My trash was to be his breakfast. He'd been watching me the whole time. AND, he knew it was trash day.

The heron's dark, beady eyes pierce right through my facade.

There’s no fooling a wild thing, no matter how much camouflage you wear.

When she looks at me, I feel known and understood.

Both, all at once.When she flies over, and her shadow covers the breadth of the river, it puts me in my place.

The day I watched her chase both her son and mate down river,

I knew I had met a royal well worth watching. Who needs Harry when you have a heron?

My new friend is a queen.

She rules two miles of bouncing rafts and fly-fishermen hugged up to their armpits by rubber waders. She is a magnificent wild thing.

And I'm a wild thing.

Just a different kind. I am in search of a home, a place of belonging,?and I am lucky to have been adopted by a river queen.

When the latest wildfire came to the mountains,

sent smoke over the mountain, it hurt me to breathe, thanks to my *%@X post-Covid asthma. I’ve had it three times and that’s the price I’ve paid to live through it. (And yes, I’ve been vaccinated.)

But the heron is a pilot flying without radar.

She had no choice but to abandon her perch to outfly the smoke. If she had stayed, she would have choked to death.

This week she came back to reclaim her rookery.

But her voice sounds brittle and hoarse, even more than usual. The Black Bear fire was the third one this season. It burned more than 2,000 acres in a matter of days. She’s lucky she can fly.

The foresters say to get used to it, more are on the way.

They say the fires will be bigger and hotter each year.

That’s going to be quite a challenge for my queen.

Her kind have ruled this river for over a million years.

But, she’s tired now.

Tired of outrunning fires and raising her chicks on a stick nest. She’s just plain “Wore out” as my grandmother would say.

I can relate. Motherhood is hard work.

While my only offspring graduates from med school this weekend, her chicks are already returning home.

Her kids pressure her feeding grounds and vie for territorial rights.

My offspring pressures my larder, too, but he just wants to land somewhere to catch his breath, before he takes flight again.

But the heron can’t tolerate her kids’ intrusion.

Not if she wants to make it through another year. She must focus on herself, rebuild and restore. In this matter, too, we understand each other.

So every morning we meet up in the dark.

Two old girls taking a holy breath,

and watching the moon give way to the dawn.

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