Behind the Puddle

I know Great Blue Herons perch in trees.

I know this because I have looked it up. I have read about it. I have watched Stella and Stanley fly into the trees around the puddle more times than I can count. I have watched them sit quietly on branches, move higher into the tree, and occasionally chase one another through branches with those enormous wings as though a Great Blue Heron navigating a tree is the most ordinary thing in the world.

Apparently, knowing all of this has made absolutely no difference.

Every single time I look toward the trees and see one of them perched there, I stop what I am doing.

I grab my phone. I take a picture. Usually I take several pictures, because apparently the hundreds of photographs already in my phone are insufficient evidence that Great Blue Herons can, in fact, sit in trees.

There is something about seeing them up there that my brain still cannot quite reconcile.

A heron belongs in the water.

At least that is the picture I carried for most of my life. Long legs standing in shallow water. That unmistakable neck stretched forward or folded back. A bird standing impossibly still before suddenly striking at a fish. Even when I pictured one flying, it was usually flying over water or toward another place along the shoreline.

I never really pictured one hanging out in a tree.

Yet Stella and Stanley apparently missed the memo about where I think herons belong.

They use these trees regularly. Sometimes one will sit quietly enough that I don’t immediately notice it. Other times there is absolutely nothing subtle about their arrival. There are enormous wings moving through branches, one following another, and what appears from my patio to be some sort of disagreement over preferred seating arrangements.

And every time, I am fascinated all over again.

Maybe that is the part I don’t want to lose.

We tend to assume that understanding something should make it less remarkable. Once we know how something works, once we have seen it enough times, once someone explains that it is perfectly normal behavior, we are supposed to stop being surprised.

But why?

I know the herons perch in trees.

I also know hummingbirds hover, geese raise their young together, squirrels can somehow defeat almost every supposedly squirrel-resistant bird feeder, and birds will happily ignore expensive birdseed when their preferred Walmart blend is available.

Knowing these things doesn’t have to make them ordinary.

There is a difference between learning enough about something to understand it and becoming so accustomed to it that we stop noticing.

Maybe that is why I keep taking the pictures.

It isn’t really because I need proof anymore. There is plenty of proof. An almost shameful amount of proof, actually. I have shown more people photographs of Stella and Stanley sitting in trees than any normal person probably should.

But every photograph says something slightly different.

Look what I got to see today.

There they are again.

The same birds. The same trees. The same behavior I now know is completely normal.

And somehow, still worth stopping for.

There are probably hundreds of things around us that we once found fascinating before familiarity made them part of the background. Maybe wonder doesn’t disappear because we understand something. Maybe we simply stop giving ourselves permission to be impressed by things we’ve already seen.

Sitting behind the puddle has reminded me that I don’t have to do that.

I can know exactly what I am looking at and still be amazed by it.

I can understand that a Great Blue Heron sitting high in a tree is perfectly normal and still drop what I’m doing when I spot one.

I can take another picture.

And another.

And apparently another.

Because perhaps the better measure of wonder isn’t how rarely something happens.

Maybe it is whether, after seeing it again and again, we still look up.