AS THE WRITING of this book came to a close, Kathy and I rented a cabin in the mountains east of our home for a week. When we arrived, we sat on the deck overlooking Lake Cuyamaca, an alpine lake in the high-desert mountains. Recent firestorms had taken most of the pines, but some remained on an island. We watched the shadows of clouds move across the water. Our eyes followed the changing light on Stonewall Peak, where we had first hiked before we were married.
That afternoon, she and I went for a walk to the lake and across a dam to the island, and then into the forest of oak and remnant pine, then along the stream that feeds the lake. Stonewall stood in the near distance. We walked back to the lake and sat on a bench under the trees at water’s edge. A flotilla of Canada geese, a species known for fierce monogamy, moved out of a cove and along the shore, pausing in front of us to feed in the silt and water plants. The largest goose watched us closely, until it made some signal, imperceptible to us, and the other geese followed him to the next cove.
White egrets and two great blue herons stood in the shallows. One heron lifted into the air and flew toward the island’s point, carved a long arc, and glided back to rejoin its mate. We watched a bass cruising the shallows, a curious ground squirrel, two dragonflies, a swarm of small shorebirds. We sat for a long time, letting all of this envelop us.
Later, as we recrossed the dam in the wind, we looked out over the green backwater pasture. Kathy asked if the boys had ever been on the island.
I said, yes, I brought them here when they were small: “We slept in the van and at dawn I was awake first and saw Jason’s little hand hanging down from the top bunk.” She smiled and the wind lifted the brim of her hat. “We would both feel better and be healthier if we could come here or places like it more often,” I said. She bent to pick up some trash from the trailside.
“I agree. But I’m the one who resists. You married a city girl.”
Truth is, we both have our excuses. Even with knowledge of the benefits of the natural world, our long-established life patterns sometimes get the better of us. Kathy’s hesitancy comes in part from her earliest associations with nature, which were not always enjoyable. For my part, inertia is the main barrier. And too much work. At some deeper level, perhaps the fear that developers might sweep through like a fire and take the wild places that I love. It’s happened before.
I walked Kathy to the cabin, then headed back to the lake, which was now gray in the rising wind. I rounded the point of the island and was startled by one of the great blue herons. It landed like a paratrooper on the shore, its long neck and head perfectly still. I watched it and it watched me, each of us looking for clues to the other’s next move. The intensity of the heron’s eyes was disconcerting. Then, without looking away, the bird lifted its wings and pushed its body up, held there for a second or two, and then floated higher and glided off across the water. I was filled, once again, with that sense of release and return, that it I had felt so many years ago under the cottonwood.
At moments like this, I need no proof of a greater intelligence beyond these gifts of sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, and other senses still unnamed. This expression is not the worship of nature, but a celebration of kinship. Ours are the eyes of the watcher being watched.
An hour passed. I felt a presence above me. I looked up. A heron hovered directly above me, looking down. Then the wind shifted and the bird floated backward and to the side. It pumped its wings twice, and was gone. But I knew that if I waited patiently, it would return.