July at the beach is simply a magical time. It is a time of giggling with girl friends over which sundress to wear, boisterous beer with the boys, leisurely sunset dining on a bayfront patio.
It is a time of damply dusky dawn on the marshlands where we live. On a recent predawn morning, Oakley, our effervescent young Portuguese water dog, jumped up to signal that she needed to be taken out. I shuffled into a long coat, tossed on a baseball cap and zipped up, braced for the damply cool bay air.
Beyond the narrow strip of road, high tide has ushered in a bay full of smoky grey skies. My eye is drawn to the musky green bay water. At shoreline, the bay is flanked by an army corps of tall taupe marsh grass soldiers, creating a stable community for the slithery mud floor of my watery world.
In the dim light, I make out ovals of white where great white egrets and their smaller cousins, gold slippered snowy egrets. They soar low and slow in the pre-sunrise glow.
All around our marshlands cottage, cormorants, egrets, herons, and plovers are our backyard neighbors. We have no human backyard neighbors, only the multifarious crabs, mollusks, ducks and swallows that wander in to visit. Mutual respect allows us to live peacefully together.
The long-legged, S-necked egret feeds on our wetlands. Monogamous, they form communities with other birds to enable both parents to incubate their rarely-laid eggs. Guarding their young is imperative: stronger infant egrets often kill their weaker siblings in the nest within the first three weeks of life. The powerfully graceful great white egret is the symbol of the National Audubon Society, which helped prevent extinction by supporting legal protection after egrets were nearly exterminated by plume hunters.
After earlier reduction of their populations by 95 percent, their safety today is much improved. Egrets casually grace our summer beach world in ecologically- educated Stone Harbor.
I have always felt a kinship with egrets. At 69 inches high, over half of my body is legs, so imagining life as an egret feels like a dream come true.
I actually “mind “ egrets in the words of iconic conservationist, Marc Bekoff: I can imagine that I take off from our deck, using my long legs to propel me as I soar through the air to find food for my young. Gentle by nature, I am forceful: I can swoop down and snare prey by waiting for it to come within range of my long neck. My blade-like bill delivers a deathblow with a quick thrust of my sharp bill, swallowing my prey whole. Delighted by this seemingly effortless power, I can imagine a triumphant, “Slurp! and my prey has become breakfast for the endangered babies waiting for my return.
In the language of Bekoff, my awareness has been raised to the extent that I can “mind” being an egret, I can imagine life as an egret: In his thinking, I have been “rewilded” as much as my humanness allows, I can try to think as a great white egret.
The wildness just below the surface of the water teems with life and death. I share my neighborhood with marshland creatures who understand what I can hardly imagine:
This early morning, I am struck by the paradox of my experience. Here I am, surrounded by animals living in the wild to both sides of me but walking along Stone Harbor Boulevard.
In three hours, this thorofare will be heavily traveled, but now, in the predawn air, heavy with rain not yet fallen, the marshlands belong to me, to Oakley and to the species of this damp paradise.
I return to my marshland sunrise and decide to take her home as the sun just begins to create a tangerine horizon. I walk home to John, aware that he will soon wake for our morning tea time….I hover between the world of feeling human and imagining what it is like to be an egret. What do I prefer? Fortunately it is a choice I will never have to make.
To consider: Rather than pretending that your dog or cat or pet bird or fish is like you, have you ever imagined that you think, feel and have similar motivations to your own dog or cat?
Have you ever tried to enter the mind of the animals that are part of your world? If you concentrate on the future of our planet, would you want to protect the elephants, the egrets, the bay animals that form my neighborhood, from death and destruction at human hands? If so, how might our world be different? And might, just might you enjoy it more?
To read: Marc Bekoff. Rewilding Our Hearts. 2014. New World Library. Novato, Calif.
Villas – Look what happened on Jan 6 th with Trump, I do not blame’ Michelle Obama for not coming! You cannot trust his allies for it to be a calm day, for her safety she is safer at home.
