Gray Heron
My wife would see the bird by itself, that bird always by itself. And she’d say, “Look, a gray heron.” I’d see the bird she was talking about. Maybe we’d be driving down the long driveway that leads to my parents’ house, which sits on a lake, and the bird would be standing watch on the point, looking out at the flatness of the water, keeping a vigil unto itself.
I’d say, “You mean great blue heron.”
Because there is no such thing as a gray heron, not in the field guides, not in Audubon’s.
Confused, she’d agree, “Yeah, blue heron, that’s right.”
I don’t always correct her. Often I don’t. When she used to refer to light summer beers with lemonade mixed in as “shanties,” I did not correct her. Because I found the mis-label endearing. A person’s mistakes, just as much as what they are right about, can be a big part of who they are, their quiddity. She calls russet potatoes “russerts,” and there’s no way I’m going to correct her on that one. She spells mozzarella as “motzarella.” I have secretly kept grocery store lists to memorialize these things. We’ve been married for seventeen years. I consider my ongoing silence about these minor incorrections among my best-held secrets.
But we have friends who bird, and I bird, so I couldn’t let “gray heron” stand.
Though, I’ve gotta say. I’m sitting here now with the vision-memory of that bird in my head. Some great blue herons are more blue than others. The bluer great blue herons can be a steely, dark blue. Others have a lot of white feathers mixed in.
The one that hangs around my parents’ place is a grayer version of the bird. Huddled into itself at times it looks like a nest of feathers on top of a stick—a shaggy stork of a bird, solitary on the point, looking miserable on a dreary day. What do these birds think about all day? Why is it always alone? Why is it called a “great” blue heron? Because there is a “little blue” heron, a similar but smaller, bluer bird? And why is the great blue called blue, when in fact the palette of its feathers covers every step of the spectrum from blue to gray to white and back?
Maybe there is such a thing as a gray heron, in the same way that the light, lemony beers we drink in the summer are shanties just as much as they are shandies. And baked potatoes are russerts just as much as they’re russets. What goes on our pasta might in fact be motzarella, which I can hardly even get past the spell checker on this word processor because this spell checker doesn’t know my wife, which is a shame because she knows that there are lots of ways to spell things, and birds of all colors waiting for something to happen on the shore of every lake.
Gray heron illustration by Brook Haley, John’s wife.
* Gray heron sketch in the beginning + thumbnail was created by John Randall.
