The news that Bob Dylan is turning seventy got to me. The picture in my head is of a wild-haired, folk-rock rebel.
Now this guy who was once the voice of the seventies is going to be in his seventies.
A skinny Great Blue Heron is standing in a pond near my house. His plumage is messed by the wind. He looks beaten up by time.
I wonder how old this bird is. Herons can be over twenty.
One thought leads to another. The old heron reminds me of Bob Dylan. And about how time keeps moving people, herons and everything else into the future.
A song pops into my head. “Time…keeps on slippin’ slippin’ into the future…” This is not a Dylan song, although it’s from his era.
It’s from the Steve Miller Band, called “Fly like an Eagle.” It has an eagle in it, “…flyin’ to the sea.” Now I start thinking about eagles.
(This is nothing like reporting that I saw a southern regional wood warbler unexpectedly in the north. I like spotting rare birds. But there’s more to bird watching.)
Sometimes bird watching is just that: bird watching. Staring heron-like at a heron. Getting into the Zen of it. Letting your mind wander to eagles…
Best Bald Eagle I ever saw was in Michigan, flying low over a poor man’s lake. It looked like a poster for America.
I saw another eagle over a beach in Florida once. It might’ve been flying to the sea, like the eagle in Steve Miller’s song.
I guess I’d like eagles better if they didn’t look mad. I respect the way they fly, and their strength. But they’re always scowling.
Vultures fly strong, too, yet they keep an easy-going look on their ugly faces. One of my favorite old writers, Ed Abbey, wanted to come back as one.
Maybe he did. Yeah, Abbey’s dead. Dylan’s seventy.
And I’m standing like a fool watching an old heron. Meandering in my mind about eagles in my past. Time keeps on slippin’ into the future. So do we all.
True dat!
These quiet moments of reflection in nature, sharing the world at a singular point and time with another being, a bird in nature, each enjoying no struggle, special moments in life.
Jill Forster
So live, that when thy summons comes to join the innumerable caravan which moves to that mysterious realm where each shall take his chamber in the silent halls of death, thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, scourged by his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
W.C. Bryant
this is your best! I guess the reason there is so much written about time, is that it’s so elusive, always moving and totally out of our control, give it up.That Heron stare was a timeless moment, maybe for both of you, but probably more for the Heron
Yes, shocking that Mr. Zimmerman is turning 70. I liked a couple of his songs, but the ‘Message’ numbers had a certain hernia like feeling about them. Not to be a smart a–, but wouldn’t his getting older brand him as an ‘Old Crow’?
Mike: Here’s what Omar K. had to say about
the onrush of age, time and a bird. Marc
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter–and the Bird is on the Wing.
This is wonderful. I am parked below the Red River Dam near Denison, Texas watching 6 or 7 Great Blues wait for the fish to leak out from the spillway. I had never seen them in groups before… your words said so much to me.
I live full time in a 29′ RV. Here on the Red River I am learning to love the black vultures. They have such cute ways. Sometimes they lie around on branches like cats in a window…