I drove to Hidden Lake Gardens today not to get inspired, but to accomplish a mission. My mission today was to try and spot Crow and photograph them. But, the Crow and weather were uncooperative. I saw no Crow today. On my way home I thought about all the things that inspire me. Birds are up there on the list. Trees, rivers, lakes, and nature in general inspire me. But that’s not the only thing. Music inspires me. When I got back from New Mexico last Fall I tuned into Native American Radio on iTunes. I always feel a connection to Native American music and Native American art. I met a Native American recently who told me the only difference between a Mexican and a Native American is a border along the Rio Grande. Then there are books. My studio is filled with books. Literature has influenced my life more than anything else. I am constantly referring to quotes from Thoreau, books on Zen, fly fishing philosopher John Gierach, Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Edward Abbey and various poets. Right now I’m reading the book, “The Best of Beston”…poetic prose of nature writing. My favorite quote by Beston relates to birds of course. I heard it on a BirdNote podcast. Here it is….
” We need another and wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And, therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth”.
I like this quote because I truly believe that humans are no more superior to birds than they are to ants, fish or horses. We have become completely disconnected from this Earth, walking around with our cell phones and internet at our fingertips. They’re just a crutch. Birds dont need a GPS to migrate from Canada to South America. Animals can sense a Tsunami. So fixated on power and electricity we are. Without it we are hopeless. Superior no. Feeble yes. That’s what we are.
The Heron 