Egret Redux
The last time an egret triggered me to write a post was in the summer of 2018 when we were visiting California for a few months, interrupting our stay on Sunnyhill in Hartwick. In 2018 an egret flew across 880 as we were driving from Palo Alto to Livermore, a wild thing in a man made landscape. Today I had a much closer view of the male egret who has taken up residence on the canal along which Charlie and I take our daily walks. We have seen pairs of mallards on the canal since we arrived here in the summer, but the pair of egrets just showed up a few weeks ago. The female is small and delicate; the male is tall, powerful and graceful.
Egrets have almost certainly been nesting in this area since long before humans crossed the land bridge from Asia and made their way into North America. This pair carry themselves with the calm dignity of ownership. The female is a little on the timid side, and I see her mostly down in the canal bed. But the male is fearless, often sitting on top of the chain link fence that separates the canal from the trail, just feet away from walkers, dogs, and bikers. I saw him one day in the canal bed, fishing expertly. I watched him for a while, and then Charlie and I turned away to continue our walk. Charlie stopped to sniff something, and I waited for him, my back to the egret. A man and woman walking towards me gestured for me to look behind me – turn around, they mouthed. I turned. There, just three or four feet away, stood the beautiful, tall, snow white egret, atop the fence, our eyes at about the same level. Breathtaking.
There was the element of surprise, certainly. Just being that close to him, and at eye level, would have been breathtaking no matter how prepared I had been. He’s a wild thing, and has good reason to stay away from humans. In the 19th century egrets were killed by the millions so their feathers could be used to adorn ladies hats. Surely, there must be some genetic memory of the dangers humans pose. But this bird has forgotten it, or chooses to overlook it, or demands to change the narrative. He looks like what he is, a proud, long term resident, ceding ground to no one.
It’s impossible for me to live in the densely populated Bay Area and not think about the damage our species is doing to those we share the planet with, and to the planet as a whole. Out on Sunnyhill, surrounded by so much space not inhabited by humans, sharing our hill with the geese, it was easy to think of that damage abstractly, as something distant, something others are responsible for. But here, I’m so clearly part of the problem. I use far too much fossil fuel and far too much water. I create far too much waste.
Describing Thomas Jefferson’s beliefs about slavery, Clint Smith writes in his excellent book, How the Word is Passed, “Jefferson’s vacillation from moral repugnance to hollow justification reflects how he largely succumbed to that which he knew was indefensible.” My position in society is obviously a lot less consequential than Jefferson’s, but when I read that line I thought it captured my beliefs about the damage I do to the environment. I am not enslaving other people, but I am certainly contributing to their ill health, their shorter life expectancy, and their worsening living conditions – to the floods, the fires, the tornadoes, the droughts they already face. My position is indefensible, despite the hollow justification that I’m not as bad an abuser as many people. The egret, beautiful and powerful in his possession of his home reminds me that I am destroying that home.
When Charlie and I leave the house, we head almost due east on Hoover Avenue. In the afternoon, on a clear day in February, the sun warms my back. It is a pleasure as old as life itself, the pleasure of the warm sun, the sun that sustains life. Life on this planet has shown enormous resiliency, and I don’t doubt that some forms of life will survive the worst of what we do to our beautiful blue planet. But a world with cockroaches and no egrets doesn’t seem like a great outcome.