Peace Like a River

My son participated in a mountain biking practice at Mohican State Park earlier this week, and I waited in the park while he rode, relishing 90 minutes of relatively poor cellphone reception. My plan was to make my way down to the lake that sits at the bottom of the hill from Mohican Lodge, find a bench or table to sit, and spend some time with Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. (I’m just at the part in Bel Canto where the terrorists and the captors are listening to the opera singer who is also a hostage in the house, and music is changing everything.) 

The path to the water was steep but paved, blanketed and cooled by deep shadows from the dense canopy overhead. As I approached the lake, my flip-flops slapped noisily against the concrete. Just as I caught sight of the shoreline, my clunky descent disturbed my favorite of all birds, a blue heron, perched right where I planned to sit.

When I was commuting to Cleveland from Akron for work several years ago, I crossed Wolf Creek every morning. Wolf Creek’s watershed flows and builds until it becomes the Barberton Reservoir, the primary source of drinking water for the City of Barberton. Watersheds like Wolf Creek have been dammed for all kinds of purposes—flood protection, human consumption, and recreation among them—but it also serves as habitat for at least one blue heron who chose to perch most mornings on a fallen log floating forty feet from the shore.

I looked for the heron every morning. It became my “spirit animal,” so to speak, a symbol I took as a sign of God’s presence on my drive and in my life. During a hard season of job transitions, marital uncertainty, missing friends, and family health concerns, I hunted for the heron, hungry for something to latch onto for stability and hope, a muse, a mentor, a monument.

When I saw the heron, I recited lines of poems into my phone to capture where my heart was with God that particular day: Why was the heron (God) so far away? What did the heron (God) think about this latest tragedy? Where did the heron (God) go when the heron (God) seemed to be nowhere? Why, despite all of the traffic and noise and distractions of human life, did the heron (God) choose to stay here, of all places? What if I could become the heron, be one with the heron (God), and transcend this world, invite the Holy Spirit to flow in and through my life, instead of making this mundane trip… could we turn this mundane trip into something sacred? What if I could take the heron (God) with me in the car, be transfigured into some spirit being with a long beak and gangly legs, and squawk at passing drivers?

I wrote all kinds of heron poems, some of which ended up in Between the Heron and the Moss. And then I flew away from Wolf Creek. We moved back to Ashland, into a season of stability, marital strength and satisfaction, illness and recovery and healing, deep-rooted community. The heron disappeared as a regular totem of God’s Spirit in my routine, though anytime I am by a river or lake, I watch for it still, longing to see this mysterious, silent bird stand and then lift and glide across still waters.

When I saw my heron again on the shore of Pleasant Hill Lake, it was just for a moment. I only saw it as it was creating its absence, lifting away from the place I planned to sit. I prepared to sit where it had been, on the concrete embankment. I set down my phone, keys, and library book, then put my own person on the slab, wary of losing my flip-flops, or my keys, or my phone, or my book, in the water below me. I pictured sloshing soggily back up the hill after having to retrieve any one of these objects. I imagined how squishy the bottom of the lake would feel between my toes, and how fruitless this whole effort would end up being—water-logged phone, lost keys, ruined book. (None of these scenarios played out.) I matched the silent and effortless departure of the heron from the concrete with equal parts clumsiness and noise. Spirit animal or not, I am no blue heron.

Pleasant Hill Lake is another reservoir, formed by damming the Clear Fork branch of the Mohican River. It was formed for the same reasons as so many other reservoirs and lakes across Ohio, to protect farmland, to prevent devastating floods, to preserve drinking water, and to encourage human enjoyment of the natural environment. While I sat contemplating the cicadas and the now-invisible heron and the crows and the swishing leaves and the soaring birds of prey, the wake ebbed and rose in response to passing speedboats.

I was irritated about the speedboats. Every time I tried to get a clear, uninterrupted photo and/or video of the lake and shoreline (something Insta-worthy to prove how disconnected I can be from social media), some boater with his music blaring would come roaring through the valley, towing some screaming teens on a tube. How irritating. If it wasn’t for these boaters enjoying this beautiful evening, maybe I could catch a glimpse of another heron, or the same heron. Why couldn’t I have this lake to myself, undisturbed?

The water rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell, knocking fallen waterlogged limbs against the edge of the embankment. The water rose and fell against a shoreline that once was hills and trees and cliffs dozens of feet above the ancient curve of the Clear Fork branch of the Mohican River. The water rose and fell, hushing hushing hushing the woods behind me, which didn’t listen; it kept up its relentless buzzing in response to nothing. The cicadas don’t care about the hum of motorboats, as far as I can tell. They just want to attract a female. 

In the wake of another boat, I watched an eagle glide then dip close to the water then swing wide and high overhead. From above my book, I caught glimpses of its reflection on the surface, always too late to capture another “Look what I saw!” photo on my phone. Eventually, I gave up. I waste so much time trying to capture what is right in front of me to savor. 

Sometimes, photography forces me to slow down, look closer, and then the lens is a gateway into awe. Sometimes, photography is the effect following the cause of light shed just so through branches, of celebration, of some beloved whose glory seems to be cascading from them. In those moments it only seems appropriate to pick up a smartphone and document this holiness. Who wouldn’t? I love the art of photography, but so often my motive isn’t to find the beauty that is but to show off the beauty I saw. That is just one of the vials of poison social media keeps tucked in its cupboards. 

I set my phone back down, vowing to leave it be and let it be, let creation just keep being with me in the middle of it instead of trying to take a trace away with me. My phone pulsed hungrily on the concrete next to me.

I picked up Bel Canto again. The book begins with a birthday party whose guest of honor didn’t even want to be there except for the Opera singer invited for his benefit. The party is hosted by the Vice President of the country instead of the President, who decided to stay home to watch a soap opera. When the lights go out after the Opera singer’s sixth song, no one suspects they are being attacked, no one suspects there’s a terrorist plot to kidnap the President, who is not in attendance. So far, the book hasn’t left the VP’s home. A dozen different languages in a hostage situation are traversed by Gen, the Japanese translator, and Roxanne Coss, the Opera singer. Gen is bridging the language barriers, and Roxanne makes up in music what gets lost in translation. All of these different voices from different countries and different socio-economic backgrounds merge under one roof, terrorists with state dignitaries, captors with hostages, learning how to live together. Patchett had me, until a ripple of reflection caught my attention again. I looked up. What if it was the heron, or an eagle again? I bookmarked Bel Canto and reached for my phone.

There is no escaping how intertwined our lives and technologies are with each other, with Spirit, with nature. We are together one living breathing pulsing being, animate and inanimate molecules of a small blue marble spinning through vast emptiness we call empty only because we have no other way to say or know yet what all that space in space is. The eagle is too far away already, a speck of black in my lens that could be a common crow or a smudge of dust I missed. 

And what if it is? Wouldn’t that be enough? Wouldn’t that be enough, to be a common crow, black as space and soaring, to be a smudge of dust, the origin of which I might be able to trace to last year’s leaves, a shadowing oak tree, a century old acorn, a drop of rain on some former life that crawled across this river’s edge before the dam, before the reservoir collected, before speedboats were invented? Isn’t that enough?

Another speedboat with a wakeboarder towed behind this time announced its approach, and I watched, smartphone open, camera set to record. The water shimmered and wobbled together as one from behind the propeller. The wakeboarder braced and waited, then leaned away from the wake, letting the water lift his board above him until he was airborne and upside-down, board above, head below, and then just like that he was upright again, the water—so long a source of life it doesn’t even blink—catching him, letting him stand and glide across its surface.

It is enough.