Honey Creek runs through the farm in Missouri. I spent many hours walking its banks and following where it led. Sometimes I would find an arrow head or a fossil, or a crawfish.
Deep in the woods there was a place where morels grow among a field of blue belles and may apples, among turkeys and wood ducks.
As the blue belles flowered into a surreal carpet, I would wander in to be near the old sycamore that towered over the bend in the creek. It was a magnificent tree with sinewy limbs that swayed with the wind. It was hollow twelve feet up with an opening big enough to walk into, yet it was a thriving giant of a tree. I would imagine what it would be like to live there huddled in its hollow or among its splendid mottled branches.
One day as I was exploring I spotted a small, dead fish at the bottom of the tree, some distance from the creek. I considered this for a while. Had a mink carried it there and lost it? There were no tracks, nor sign of raccoons or other fishers. Eventually I looked toward the limbs and branches above, following the variegated bark upward into massive leaves like two hands together.
And then I saw something I hadn’t noticed before.
High up, hidden among the great leaves there was a pile of branches, graying in the blue sky. It was a massive nest directly above where the fish was found. It was a heron’s nest, and this was a fish that had gotten away.
I was surprised that I would not have noticed something so large before. It seemed a natural part of that great tree, an extension of its spirit in the sky. And then I noticed another nest, peeking out from behind white limbs nearby, and another. The great sycamore was a rookery of herons, —seven nests in all!
What a surprise, what a massive tree. I had visited it for years, hands on its beautiful trunk, cradled inside within its walls and had never noticed its life above me, springing from its roots. I had never looked with asking before.
I had to look up.
Heron is one of my guides. The energy of that tree and place is with me still, a kind of perfect place, where everything is in harmony. I revisit it when I want to rest in its stillness, vibrating with life, quiet and out of sight, rooted and flowing upward, and then to take flight.
quiet after a storm / sound of the sycamore / raining on itself
