Joy in the Morning

At Silverbell Lake--I do not know if it is named Silverbell Lake, but it is alongside Silverbell Road, and it is a lake, of sorts, having been created by treated waste water--there are Great Blue Herons nesting in a Cottonwood tree growing on a small island. Or perhaps it is a Eucalyptus tree.

With wingspans of about six feet, watching a Great Blue Heron return to feed its noisy nestlings is a little like watching a large kite fly into a windmill or a willow tree. But the Herons are serene. They thread the needle as if there were no crosswind, and the control tower were not in a panic.

Fishermen at the lake sit for hours, hoping for an occasional trout, scarce now that the water is warming, or a mud-bottom catfish, knowing, mostly, that they will catch nothing.

Not the Great Blue Heron! It sails to a shoreline, posts itself like a reed, and before long a fish or a frog or something edible finds itself impaled by the Heron's sudden and wicked beak. Then, flying preposterously slowly, it returns to the nest to the applause of its brood. A Great Blue Heron is, like the current White House, a finely-tuned machine.

No, there is something wrong about that analogy! Everything, in fact.

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