Yesterday, after I made my bee and was disappointed with it, I went to the Battenkill for a swim. It was hot here and the river is always cool. I wanted to float for a while.
When I got to my usual swimming hole, there were two men there. One on the small beach of pebbles and one in the parking lot drinking a beer. Usually when I go to the river there might be an older couple sitting on low chairs or a family with kids.
The swimming hole is small and I didn’t feel comfortable being there with the two men. So I turned my car around and drove a little further to the Georgi museum. A small park with access to the same river.
At the Georgi there was a couple on the lawn and three women swimming. I dove into the water which was cool and shallow, what I would expect for this time of year. I swam for a while then decided to walk further up the river and catch the current which would bring me back to where I had been.
I was wading through the low water, walking slow on the rocky river bottom when a white egret flew right over my head. Then it circled around twice and landed on the opposite bank of the river right in front of me.
I stood still watching it for a while then walked toward it to the place in the river I was originally headed. This egret must have been very used to people because it was only when I was about ten feet away that it took off.
But it did go far, just to a log about twenty feet down river.
I caught the current letting it carry me back to where I started thinking the whole time about the egret.
As I walked back to the car I decided I wasn’t ready to go home, so I took a foot path through the brush to a rock formation jutting out into the river. I stood looking for the best place to sit and put my feet in the water when once again the egret flew right over my head low enough so I could see its legs and feet stretched out along its belly.
Again it circled over head twice. This time it disappeared in the trees on the other side of the river.
When I got home I looked up egret in the book Animal Speak and learned that an egret is a kind of heron.
Now I knew what I was going to do.
When I made the bee yesterday I’d been thinking about the ravens who have been visiting the farm and the green heron that I’ve been watching all summer.
When I first saw the heron I had no idea what kind of bird it was. I only knew it was something I’d never seen before. It would sit in the trees on the edge of the farm, crying out, then fly straight over the barnyard and out of sight.
Using the Merlin bird identification app I learned the bird was a juvenile green heron.
It seemed every time I was outside, the green heron would fly over and either land in the same tree or would fly from that tree and head north.
I think the bee was a warm up. A way of easing me into what I really wanted to do. And after my encounter with the egret, I knew that meant creating a heron.
So that’s what I began working on today. I did a bunch of drawing and came up with just the right heron for a new fabric painting.
I’ll write more about the meaning of the heron and the process of creating it as I do. For now it feels good to be on the right path and to have gotten started on my next fabric painting.
