Behind the Puddle

I have seen a Great Blue Heron enough times now that seeing one probably shouldn’t be particularly exciting. And yet it is. Every single time.

I know Stella and Stanley visit the puddle. I know they stand along the edge looking for fish. I know they sometimes perch in the trees. I know approximately how enormous they are when those wings open. None of this is new information.

And still, when one comes flying across the puddle, I stop what I am doing and watch. Apparently wonder doesn’t care whether I’ve seen something before. I’m glad. Because when I first started spending so much time behind the puddle, there was something new almost every day.

A bird I couldn’t identify. A turtle crossing the water. A squirrel performing some impossible maneuver. Baby geese, baby mallards, and a beaver swimming through. Things I had probably lived beside for years without really seeing suddenly seemed to be everywhere.

Eventually, though, new becomes familiar. I know where to look for Pinecone. I recognize some of the birds. I expect the geese. I know Shelly is somewhere out there even when I can’t find her.

And perhaps that is when we are most at risk of losing wonder. Not because the world becomes less remarkable. Because we become accustomed to it. We do that with so many things.

The view we once thought was beautiful becomes the view outside the window. A relationship that once felt extraordinary becomes part of everyday life. Someone whose arrival once made us excited becomes the person sitting across from us at dinner. A body does thousands of things every day without our instruction and mostly receives our attention when something stops working correctly.

The moon rises. Flowers bloom. Birds somehow know where they are going. Children grow. Seasons change. And because these things happen repeatedly, we begin treating them as ordinary. But ordinary and remarkable aren’t opposites. Sometimes ordinary just means we have been lucky enough to experience something more than once.

I think that is what wonder looks like for me now. It is quieter than surprise. I don’t need to discover a new creature every morning. Sometimes I just need to look at something familiar long enough to remember that I still don’t completely understand it.

I don’t understand how a hummingbird does what it does. I don’t understand how birds know when to migrate. I don’t understand how the geese organize themselves or how Shelly knows where she is going beneath water I can barely see through. I don’t understand how a tiny seed becomes one of the plants I am desperately trying not to lovingly kill.

And perhaps I don’t need to. Wonder doesn’t always ask us to find an explanation. Sometimes it simply asks us not to become so familiar with the world that we stop being amazed by it. There may come a day when Stella or Stanley flies across the puddle and I don’t immediately reach for my phone.

But I hope there never comes a day when I don’t look up.