Great Blue Heron
(Ardea herodias)
“Garnet, come here, listen to this,” Hannah called. The book I’d given her to study lay open in her lap, her finger resting on the place she’d left off reading. We’d been working together three weeks, and although silent letters and diphthongs still tripped her up, she did pretty well as long as she had some context for what she was reading and some interest in it. I’d offered to find her books on an interest of hers, but she seemed reluctant to give up the bird books when she was just starting to get comfortable with them, and I didn’t want to push her.
When I abandoned my letter to Alice and moved down the veranda to join Hannah, her finger tracked up the page a bit and then resumed its travels across the words she thought might interest me. Her halting voice read the passage aloud:
Crane Island is situated in the upper portion of upper Lake Minnetonka, and has received its name from the circumstance of its being the breeding and roosting place of the “Blue Cranes” as this species is popularly called. How long it has been thus occupied is not even traditional, for it was a heronry earlier than the Indian traditions began . . .
“Keep reading, Hannah. You’re doing wonderfully. I can’t believe there is a heronry here—right here-and I didn’t even know it. Read me some more.”
“You take a turn, Garnet. My eyes are starting to cross.” She passed me the book and pointed to where I should begin. I continued:
Early in the mornings, between the 5th of May and the 20th of October, they may be seen flying far away in all directions till all have departed. Then from four in the afternoon until dark, the birds return . . .
I took a moment to skim over the herons’ mating rituals and nesting habits, forgetting Hannah’s reading lesson entirely in my excitement. A little farther down the page, I began to read aloud again:
Since that lake has become a great summer resort, and is constantly plied with steamers, yachts, and row-boats constantly flitting back and forth at all hours of the day and night, it is a standing surprise that these birds (and their copartners, the cormorants) still continue to return year after year to the same familiar spot. However, it must be confessed that from these disturbing causes, to which should be added a long-continued practice of firing pistols at them from the steamers’ decks to see the females rise in clouds from their nests, and the robbing of their eggs by men and boys by the employment of telegraph pole climbing irons to reach them, their numbers became so sensibly reduced as to call in special legislation, or all would have been destroyed or driven entirely away.
“Blue cranes . . .” I said, gazing out toward the lake and absentmindedly handing the book back to Hannah. “‘Special legislation’ means they’ve passed laws to protect them—that means they might still be out there! When was this published? Must have been during the time of the great steamers with that reference in there. Look in the front of the book for the copyright information.”
Hannah pawed through the first few pages, searching for a publication date as I’d taught her to do. “I think, yes, 1892,” she said.
“Quite awhile ago. Well . . . the heronry might still be there. If it is, I must go. And I must bring Miss Maple. She has to see it—see what it is that thoughtless people can so easily destroy.”
My love for Isabella and my productive truce with Hannah had combined to give me a blissful happiness that had lasted weeks. But it was imperfect happiness, because it was marred by two things: first, my impending departure for home and all that awaited me there, and second, my disappointment in myself for not pursuing the feather issue with Miss Maple. A trip to Crane Island just might resolve our disagreement and clear my mind of that second impediment to joy The fact that it was Friday, the sixth of August, was beyond anyone’s control, but Miss Maple’s ornithological education was clearly my duty. If I fancied myself a concerned scientist, and not just a hobby birdwatcher, there was no time like the present to take some responsibility and begin to act for change.
Over the weekend, I did my research and set the whole thing up. Our departure on the Stillwater streetcar boat was set for five o’clock, and since Mondays were notoriously slow in the park and we’d doubtless be the only passengers, I’d talked the captain into letting us drift awhile at the heronry.
“You don’t want Crane Island, though,” he said. “In 1906 a storm blew most of the trees down on Crane Island. The herons’ old territory was turned into a summer cottage retreat in 1907. But the birds still roost on Wawatasso, the next-door island, even though speedboats swarm the lake in the summertime and picnickers are constantly invading their territory. It’s amazing, really, that they’ve held out.”
“Can you take us there?”
“Why not,” he said with a shrug. “Monday at five. Don’t be late.”
When Monday dawned, I told Mrs. Harrington the truth about where I’d be for the afternoon and evening— but would Miss Maple agree to come? As soon as I arrived at work, I proposed an excursion to my boss.
“I’ll stay the afternoon today and help you close up, Miss Maple, if you’ll come out with me after work. There’s something I’m dying to show you.”
“How mysterious,” she said with a sly grin. “Sure, why not. Business is so slow on Mondays, but you can help me tidy the back room if you like.”
We spent the afternoon filing papers and organizing boxes and making small talk. After closing up shop at half past four, I led Miss Maple down to the docks. We were indeed the only passengers, and we had our choice of seats. We claimed a bench near the prow on the main deck, a little ways behind the captain. Responding to the deafening shriek of the steam whistle and two clangs of the captain’s bell, the dockhands untied the moorings and the engineer fired up the hissing steam engine. The boat backed away from the dock and then meandered toward the upper portion of the lake and into Smithtown Bay.
It was a heavy, humid sort of day, so once the trip was underway, we climbed the steep steps to the upper deck to lean on the painted railing and feel the cool lake breeze. We watched the water part beneath us and felt the wind on our faces as we chatted. We’d been talking the better part of the day, and the conversation now began to range freely into more personal realms. Before I knew it, I was telling her I was thinking about going to college instead of getting married right away.
“What about you, Miss Maple? How come you never married?” I ventured to ask.
“Well, unlike most spinsters, I made a choice to stay unwed. My parents died when I was about your age, and everyone told me I had better find myself a husband. But I had this crazy dream about running a shop, so I took my meager inheritance and started a business with it. I’m married to that hat shop, I suppose.” She laughed, and the reflection of the water danced in her eyes.
“You support yourself.”
“Yes. It can be done.”
“You do what you love.”
She patted my hand where it rested on the railing. “Life is too short to do anything else.”
The captain’s bell clanged once and the steam engine’s whirring slowed to a stop. We drifted just offshore of a beautiful, lush little island. My heart jumped. “This is Wawatasso Island,” I told Miss Maple. “This is what I wanted you to see.”
She looked at me suspiciously, and then gazed out toward the bit of land before us.
The island was a tiny untamed wilderness scattered with elms and sugar maples, covered with dense underbrush, and bordered by rocky shorelines. The whole island was dotted with majestic blue-gray herons, and more swooped down every moment, flying home from a long day of hunting. In flight, they folded their elegant necks, stretched their legs straight out behind them, and flapped their huge wings in slow, powerful movements against the deep blue sky.
The magnificent creatures filled the air, the shoreline, and the trees, and I could barely breathe for the splendor of it. Just like the blue baby Aunt Rachel caught all those years ago, I was shocked breathless by the beauty of life. I took out my scissors but I couldn’t cut. I knew I could never capture the scene before me—a hundred birds fishing and flying and roosting together. No wonder the book spoke of Crane Island in awe as a miraculous triumph of conservation over thoughtless destruction. The site had moved but the vision was still glorious.
I looked down for a moment to catch my breath, and there on the water was the boat’s shadow, and my own. With the early evening sun behind us, we cast a dark outline on the still water of the bay. There I was, a lanky shade perched atop the boat next to Miss Maple’s plump form.
I looked closely at my edges, my boundaries, the slightly elongated lines that set me apart from lake and sky and island and bird and boat. I looked closely, pretending that I knew nothing about the girl I saw, pretending that she was some beautiful creature whose borders contained something worth holding in—something unique and extraordinary, something worth saving. I looked closely, the way I’d taught myself to look at birds, the way I’d learned to look at Isabella, and I saw myself. Then those scissors were cutting after all, as I snipped out my own image. I ignored the small ripples of the water and traced the lines that separated me from the world, and the lines that fit me into that world like the piece of a puzzle.
Yes, my father was falling apart at home and my mother was trying to put him back together. Yes, the girl I loved was rehearsing with a band for an evening show in a dance hall that some people loved and many people loathed. Yes, the boy I was supposed to marry was eagerly awaiting my return home with a question on his lips. Yes, Mrs. Harrington and her daughter were back at the hotel wasting their lives tatting lace and lying about money. And yes, I was a part of it all. But I was also separate. I had my own life to live, and no one but me could live it.
I took a deep breath and looked up at Miss Maple, who was still staring, mystified, at the view.
“So what do you think?” I asked. “Look like a bunch of nice hats-to-be?”
Her jaw dropped. She turned to me, offended, appalled. “Never again,” she said, her shoulders squared, her eyes full of the resolution. “Maybe it will hurt business, but I don’t care. Never again.”
With those words, and the knowledge that I’d brought them out of her, I knew that college would be the right decision. The more I learned, the more I could do to change people’s minds, to open their hearts, to be an active force in the world and in my own life too.
Clang. The decisive tone of the captain’s bell cut through my thoughts.
The boat’s engine started back up and our shadow moved on the water. We continued the tour of the lake, and Wawatasso Island and its inhabitants slipped away behind us. Someday, I thought, maybe I’ll come back here to study these birds. I imagined my student self drifting at the island for hours on end, taking photographs and scribbling notes and sketching images and even making sound recordings. Could I get permission to land on the island officially and investigate the nests? Has anyone done a census of this population recently? Might I someday write about these incredible birds and the measures taken to protect them? Or give a lecture? Or set up an exhibit in town to inform people, to educate them? I smiled out over the water at the thought of it all as more and more birds passed overhead, winging steadily toward the island. Going home.
“You know,” Miss Maple said later, as we walked back toward town from the docks, “I have a sister in Minneapolis. She’s a telephone operator. It’s part-time work and it pays pretty well. Let me know if you ever need a job and I’ll see if she can figure something out for you. Might help you with that college plan.”
“Thank you,” I said, my voice shaking just a little. College plan. Not a dream anymore, but a plan. The thought frightened me, but it felt right too, and telling Miss Maple made it so much more real. Would I be able to make it happen? Even with a part-time job to help with the cost I would still need my parents’ support, and that, I knew, would be a hard thing to come by. I would just have to figure it out. I was determined.
I hugged Miss Maple good-bye for the first time in our short relationship, and we parted ways.
When I got back to the hotel, Avery had a letter for me. From Mother.
Dear Garnet,
This will come as a shock to you, and I would like to deliver the news in person, but I will not be able to make it out to get you until the end of the week. I told you your father was improving, but I’ll confess that I exaggerated—out of hope, and a desire to protect you. The truth is that his condition has, if anything, deteriorated over the last two months. He lost his job, and instead of looking for another he turned to drink. Before I realized how desperate he’d become, our savings were gone. And now, I must tell you a truly horrible thing. Your father has left us. He boarded a train for the West Coast last night while I was sleeping. He left a note saying that he no longer wants to trouble his beloved wife and daughter with his terrible sadness now that he can no longer even support us. He fears that the war will never leave him, and so he felt compelled to leave us. I had hoped it would not come to this. I’m sure you’re well aware of the fact that I sent you away in part because I thought that time alone with him might help me bring him around. But it was not to be.
You are a young woman now, and so you must understand that this puts us in a precarious position. I will need your help in supporting our small family now that we are without a proper breadwinner. I know that Teddy Hopkins has intentions to propose to you, and I urge you to consider this option. Please do not allow your parents’ failed marriage to discourage you from settling down. Teddy is a good boy, and he would make a fine husband to you. There is also a chance that you could graduate early and secure a teaching position. We both know that I am not educated enough to get a very good job. I will come out to Excelsior on the Friday afternoon streetcar, after I have wrapped up some business here, and stay with you there for a few days so we can talk all this over. Then we can make the journey home together.
Take care, my dear daughter, and be strong. I will be with you shortly.
Much love,
Mother
I read it four times. Then I went into my room and closed the drapes and did not come out. I didn’t eat or sleep, and all night long I didn’t even cry.
All that time I thought and thought. I thought about Father—gone. Gone. He’d been a ghost for so long already that it surprised me how sad I was at the thought of him actually being absent from my life, my home. In truth, it was the hope that was newly gone. The hope that he would someday get better, return to us, forget the war, and really live again. Take me back out into the woods and point out deer tracks again. Chide me for walking too loudly, grab my arm to guide me over a downed tree, teach me to mimic birdcalls with whistles and hoots.
I thought about Father, but I also thought about myself. And I could not think of a way out. My mother needed me. I had to go home. And marry. Or find full-time work. I could not be so selfish as to think about going to the university, or running away with Isabella, or suggesting that Mother move in with Aunt Rachel or with her parents on the farm. There was no way out. And I didn’t even have until August twenty-sixth anymore. Mother was coming on Friday Friday the thirteenth. What an ominous date for the end of my trip to fall on.
I lay on my bed, in all of my boating clothes, staring at the ceiling and letting my brain turn in circles around the dilemma. No way out.
At dawn I pulled all the silhouettes off of the wall over my bed and ripped them to shreds. I stuffed the whole mess into the trash basket. I pulled the one I’d just done of myself out of my pocket and destroyed it too.
And that was when I began to cry.
