Author: Z Martin

In the first few paragraphs of the chapter “Great Blue Heron” in Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, Terry Tempest Williams analyzes her personal vision of a female heron, calling her “a bird who knows how to protect herself,” who has “stayed home” and “weathered the changes well” (Williams 285). Williams tips her hand a little more when she hypothesizes that “this is a generational stance, the legacy of her lineage” and says that she herself “would like to believe [the heron] is reclusive at heart, in spite of the communal nesting of her species” (285). This opening section fits in with a theme explored at length in Refuge: the idea of seeing oneself reflected in nature at the expense of reducing nature to an abstraction. Williams takes this individual heron, about whom she knows very little, and not only pads out her understanding of the bird with assumptions and guesses about her abilities, history, and family, but contradicts what she does know about the bird in order to further compare it to herself. In this way, she first reduces the bird to a metaphor or symbol, then to a complete abstraction, the image of a heron without context.

This, to clarify, is not a bad thing in and of itself. Any time a human writes about a non-human, some human attributes are going to be passed down. Even beyond that, it would appear that Williams’ intent is not so much to destroy the heron but to recreate herself. At the end of this section, she calls back to the central theme of the book, saying “refuge is not a place outside myself. Like the lone heron who walks the shores of Great Salt Lake, I am adapting as the world is adapting” (286). This illustrates how this chapter, which chiefly concerns her and Mimi travelling to see Nancy Holt’s sculpture “Sun Tunnels” and feeling a connection to the land and the universe there, relates to the overarching theme of seeking refuge from the worlds around and within oneself; Williams is using the abstraction of the heron to illustrate the importance of an adaptable, dynamic refuge by showing how resistance to change requires change.

However, in the interest of balance, it only seems fair to put Williams on the back-burner for the moment and inspect the bird she abstracted: the female great blue heron. According to allaboutbirds.org, the female great blue heron selects a male based on a few factors, including an elaborate mating ritual and the quality of the nesting territory secured by each male. Once she has selected a mate, she uses materials provided by him to construct a platform and saucer-shaped nest cup before laying a clutch of two to six eggs. She incubates these eggs for about a month, then rears the gray-downed, blue-eyed chicks for 49-81 days before they are ready to fly. During this time, the female and her mate remain together, only splitting up at the end of the year-long cycle when it is time for the pairs to reshuffle. This brings to mind my own experiences with great blue herons in the swamps of Louisiana, where many nests can be found perched precariously in trees and bushes and the birds themselves can often be seen wading through the shallows with their long, slender legs or flying overhead with their necks curled into compact S-shapes. These elegant figures seem to contrast against the more solid constructs of the trees, toads, and turtles around them, especially when their blue wing-tips are seen seemingly slicing through the trees and reeds behind them, defying their surroundings, resisting simplicity.

Standing on the corner of Cadiz and S. Tonti, you can’t tell that anything is nearby besides pothole-perforated streets and shotgun houses. The live oaks and crepe myrtles lining the sidewalks obscure your ability to see more than a block or so. However, walking east on S. Tonti for two blocks (minding your feet on the sidewalk that rises with the intrusion of oak roots and cypress knees before plunging back into the soft, wet earth) brings you to the busier corner of Napoleon and S. Tonti, though you wouldn’t quite know it from the signposting, as half of the S. Tonti street sign on this corner has been missing for a decade or so. Turning to the north and travelling four blocks, you find a row of much nicer two-story houses, their fences adorned with patterned vines and painted eyes. At the end of this line is what passes for an intersection; three main streets, each divided by a neutral ground (“median,” for those who are wrong), clash in a series of loops and whorls punctuated by grassy, triangular islands and fading, arcane crosswalks. A blind corner a few feet to the northwest bristles with vision-clouding vines. You should have crossed Napoleon earlier, but for some reason you never do. Turning to the east and furtively dashing from one neutral ground to the next, and from there to the sidewalk, you are faced with your destination: the Rosa F. Keller Library, its ancient brick walls coexisting tensely with the newer, steel-and-glass section to the northeast, its ramps and stairs colliding with the overgrown flowering shrubs outside its doors as all beckon for you to enter.

During our class visit to David Kline’s farm this past Monday, I was struck by the unusual relationship Kline had with his animals. Having relatives who had lived and worked on farms in the past, I had always been under the impression that animal farming (at least, for meat) was highly impersonal work because to name an animal that you intend to eat by-and-by is an easy way to break one’s own heart with every meal. However, the first notes to the contrary arose when Kline was explaining some of the basics of dairy farming to us in a stable full of calves. One of the calves was extremely vocal, regularly lowing over Kline and interrupting him, and at first Kline did his best to ignore the calf. However, towards the end of our time in the stable, Kline actually turned and told the calf half-jokingly to be quiet. This surprised me; from what I knew of farming and from Kline’s stern writing voice, I had expected him to be much more removed from his animals.
This perception was further dismantled when, in the hay barn, I asked him about his relationship to his animals. His reply was more or less that the sense of distance is not between himself and his livestock, but between the sense of his livestock as beloved family members and as food. That is to say, when the animal is alive, he cherishes it, names it, and allows it to have a personality of its own, but once it dies, he does his best to forget the human traits he lent it as he eats. This reminded me of the tone of a lot of his nature writing; he often seems somewhat removed from non-human animals, reporting their actions frankly and without emotion (though not without a sense of beauty), but sometimes, such as early in “Winter Visitors,” he shows a bit of his love for them: “the cows, the gentle creatures, patiently wait until last, hardly uttering a sound.”
This face-to-face conversation with Kline was invaluable in allowing me to personally understand his work.

This past summer, my father and I took a trip to the southwestern U.S. to see some of the natural wonders of a landscape far more arid than our native New Orleans. My father and I share a love for the road less traveled, tending towards abandoned, half-overgrown paths rather than popular tourist destinations. It was due to this mutual love that we found ourselves hiking on a dusty, deserted trail off of House Rock Rd. in Vermilion Cliffs, AZ. Red and orange stone behemoths jutted out of the earth, and as we climbed up over the rocks at the foot of one cliff I became acutely aware of how much higher in elevation we were than my mother and brother, who were still below sea level back in our hometown.
Near the foot of the cliff there had been a condor watching station, complete with mounted binoculars, informative signs, and a rugged picnic table on which some child had abandoned their Spider-Man-themed sunglasses. What it lacked was any visible condors, so after ten or twenty patient minutes, we headed up the trail. However, as we arrived at the summit of the cliff and turned to look out at the desert landscape below us, an enormous bird swooped into our field of vision. It was much too big to be a vulture, and the bases of its wings were coated in downy white plumage that stood out against its inky black body. It was a California condor, a member of a slowly dying race. It whirled and looped in the sky above us for perhaps a minute before swooping out of sight again, but it wasn’t until just now that I realized just how impermanent that reaction was. If I had arrived on that cliff five or ten minutes early or late, I might not have seen that condor, and that may have been my one chance to glimpse this beautiful species. I’m glad I was able to seize it.

While the grounds outside my dorm are teeming with unknown organisms, I managed to locate a little stranger in the bathroom just down the hall in the form of a small black moth-like insect clinging to the wall next to the shower. It occurred to me as I brushed my teeth that I had seen these insects in every state I’d visited, but never learned their proper name. Determined to rectify this lapse, I rinsed out my mouth, snapped a blurry photo, and set to work.

I quickly discovered that these insects were not moths, but flies– drain flies, to be precise, of which there are over 2,600 described species according to Wikipedia. However, I was lucky enough to discover the exact species I was looking for fairly quickly. It would appear that my six-legged hallmate is of the species Psychoda alternata, one of the more common species of drain fly in America. Attached are my original photograph and a clearer shot of the same species I found online for comparison.