a walk (with green heron)

July 22, 2001

Today's Reading:
A Conscious Stillness by Ann Zwinger and Edwin Way Teale, The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

This Year's Reading:
2001 Book List

I finished reading A Conscious Stillness this morning. I haven't read such a wonderful "natural history" book in a long time. Zwinger and Teale cover not just the natural but the human history of the Assabet and Sudbury rivers. In fact my favorite parts were Zwinger's description of her visit to the sewage treatment plant on the Assabet in Maynard and Teale's in depth discussion of purple loosestrife. Sewage treatment and an invasive plant. Yep, definitely not one of your unspoiled romanticized last remaining wilderness books. Both authors are (or in Teale's case "were" because he died before the book was finished) past presidents of the Thoreau society and it shows.

So full of the Assabet and Sudbury rivers, Nancy and I went for a walk from the new Audubon Society of Rhode Island education center in Bristol to Narragansett Bay. Well, we didn't actually make it to the bay because the intended trail isn't there yet and the young person at the ASRI education center directed us to an unmarked, unimproved trail off the East Bay Bike Path. The trail was fine, though extremely narrow, until we got to the part where the poison ivy leaned over the trail at elbow height on both sides. We turned back and encountered two teenage boys on bicycles who were wearing nothing but shorts. We advised them that poison ivy exposure was inevitable. The more macho of the two claimed not to be allergic to poison ivy but the other kid clearly was and they finally decided to turn back. Yup, even if I were a teenage boy with a muscular chest, I would not ride shirtless through that grove...

Except for not making it to the bay, it was a great walk. We started in a meadow full of wildflowers, some of which were new to me because Rhode Island is the northern limit of their range. It was gorgeous. Cedar waxwings and American goldfinches were all over the place. But the absolute highlight was on the way back to the education center from the unmarked trail. There in a small wet area next to the bike path stood a green heron perched on a fallen branch just above the water. It remained stock still for several minutes not 5 feet away from us. With the binoculars we could see every detail of its eyes, legs, feathers.... what a gorgeous bird! We stood there interfering with traffic on the bike path for some time. Nobody else stopped. Even when we pointed it out to some women who walked past and glanced that way. They just shrugged. How could they walk past such a magnificent bird?

I had left my camera in the car as I didn't want to be carrying it and the binoculars on the trail, so missed the best green heron photo op I've ever had. But the image is burned into my brain so who needs a photo? Dark greenish blue, chestnut/maroon and white, and those yellow legs grasping the branch with such certainty ... transcending the hubbub of Sundy on the bike path.