The White Heron Hides Itself

— by Robert Reese

Raihai, Making Prostration

Grasses lie unseen

in the field under the snow

the white heron hides itself

in its own appearance.

Dogen Zenji, “Zen of Four Seasons:
Dogen Zenji’s Waka” Translated by Shohaku Okumura, Roshi

Spring in Carmel Valley appears in the cool winds that push inland with the fog. In the early morning you can feel the change of season in the gusts that thread through the canyons and stir the sycamore trees along the river bank. In April, the river flashes under viridescent foliage and travels with great purpose to the sea. The water is the color of clear blue slate over submerged mossy rocks.

Here, the Carmel River is flanked by low wetlands and long reaches of broad flat sandbars set about with wooded islands of pale willows, sycamore and oak trees. A baseball diamond fills the flattened sand bank to the north near Paso Hondo Road; the southern bank forms the foundation of the Santa Lucia Range.  The mountains rising abruptly to Vasquez Knob and the flanks of Big Sur.  One cannot see far because the trees are full with new leaves and the river is already so low that sandbars have emerged on both sides. In the early morning the water is cool and settled in pockets with fingers of fog reaching into the canyons.

Not far from the baseball field the river branches into divergent tributaries. At the “v” of the two river branches, I saw what appeared to be long, upright sticks wading into the water. For an instant, I thought I was seeing “Slim,” the “Walking Stick,” from Disney’s “A Bugs Life” out for a morning turn. The subtle movement was, surprisingly, a Great Egret, her body vanishing into the light grey stones leaving only the appearance of long legs walking by themselves along the river bank.

I’ve rarely seen these birds feeding; mostly in flight, which may account for their near-sanctified place in the earliest folklores of the world as envoys and heralds from heavenly realms. The Greeks held that the egret was a messenger from the gods. The bird was thought to have been sent by Athena and Aphrodite, the goddesses of wisdom and love. Celtic mythology had egrets as messengers of the gods as well and thought they were imbued with wisdom.

Although a different bird than the egret, cranes also retain a prominent place in mythology. Since ancient times, the tales and myths about the cranes have represented longevity and good fortune, equanimity and faithfulness. In Chinese lore, Heaven-journeying sages are frequently represented riding on a crane, or assuming the crane's majestic form for their arrival in the clouds of immortality... Today, with her broad strong wings—perhaps seven feet in span—this Carmel Valley bird appears adept of bearing any thin, ancient Chinese sage to the heavens.

Author Peter Matthiessen writes that cranes are also “the most stirring, not less so because the horn notes of their voices, like clarion calls out of the farthest skies, summon our attention to our own swift passage on this precious earth. Perhaps more than any other living creatures, they evoke the retreating wilderness, the vanishing horizons of clean water, earth, and air upon which their species--and ours, too, though we learn it very late--must ultimately depend for survival.”

In his poem, “Prostration” (Raihai), Dogen asks where is the separation  or difference between the heron and the field? Or against the tapestry of stones and grasses, water and sky, the egret loses all distinction against the all-pervading landscape.

Okumura Roshi says of Dogen’s poem: “The practice of making prostrations is the same. We are part of the network of interdependent origination. By offering prostrations, we hide ourselves within the world of interdependent origination. We disappear into this world and become one with all being.”

On the bank the egret with jet-black legs and golden bill is basking in the early spring light. Assorted finches and woodpeckers flittering around the sandy bank and a large golden thrush loitering nearby. Her beauty and quiet suggests imminent auspicious occurrences.

As the sun ascends behind the wooded ridge and the faint stars disappear in the gather blue above, the egret hunches forward and lifts off the bank into the north wind. She banks again toward the river, which she will follow down along a ridge to her roost. There she will hunch in the clear water and feather-shift and preen and fold herself into the river and settle for the day.