Heron

I must've looked ridiculous walking down the alleyway. In an attempt to preserve a dignified look, I had thrown a black peacoat over my old hiking pants and trail runners. Thankfully, the late hour kept onlookers from having a spectacle.

I was walking down to see a heron. The heron, actually. Herons return to the same places; one has chosen a creek near my house as its haunt. I've seen her a few times, almost always at night. Tonight, I had been driving home from the library when I saw her. My first thought was to jump out of the car right then and there, but a better thought told me to go home and actually put warm clothes on. Thus, the hiking pants with long underwear underneath.

I walked over a patch of ground that once held a house, one that I'd lived in for a time during college. Crossing the railroad tracks and the hill leading to the creek, I was back at another place I call home. That creek has been a veritable siren for me, calling me back and entrancing me. The heron was in her usual spot, where Trout Run feeds into the Yellow Breeches. Instead of bare rock, she stood in floodwater, courtesy of the 36 hour-long rain we'd had until yesterday morning. She doesn't scare too easily if I give her wide berth, so I walk across the road from her and cross down to the stream.

The water is slower than usual, thanks to the flood. The night around me is pretty silent—it is January, after all—so it's still most of what I hear. It still slaps trees and rocks it normally lies far from, though it's receded in the last day and a half.

I pull a hand out of its mitten to feel the water. It's icy, though not as much as it should be this time of year. Winters here tend to depress me. Where I grew up, we have foot-deep blankets of snow covering yards and fields for most of the season; the whiteness makes the cold and the gray overhead more bearable. Between my parents' home and my own, though, the mountains catch the worst of the weather, making it more “moderate” in Harrisburg than in Punxsutawney, and also infinitely more dull.

The flood and the heron, though, serve to enliven me. I love the rain. It cleans cars and driveways and souls. It pushes creeks upwards and forces the creatures at the top of Earth's food chain to confront the fact that they cannot control everything. Rain comes whether or not we like it.

There are some things humans can screw up without even trying. We've killed the dodo bird and regularly smash up trees to have something to write on. Some things, though, continue despite our unintentional and stupid efforts to kill the earth. The rain continues, the moon continues, the stars continue. Thankfully, the heron that inhabits the mouth of Trout Run continues, despite our best efforts to ruin her habitat and her migratory patterns. As I see evidence of the earth's ability to endure and to heal itself, I have hope that we humans aren't big enough to destroy her—uh, nuclear catastrophe notwithstanding.