Herons and More Herons

Although Snowy Egrets are the most photogenic herons I see at Lake Ralphine and Spring Lake, they certainly aren’t the only ones I find there. In fact I’m amazed at the wide-variety of herons I’ve seen there over the years, especially considering how small of area it really is.

Year after year I’ve found particular herons in the same areas of the two lakes. One of the few herons I’ve seen in both lakes is the Green Heron, the last of the herons I spotted on this trip and only in passing.

 Green Heron flying

I can almost always spot a Great Egret or two in the reeds on the north end of Spring Lake.

Great Egret

The first shot I ever got of a Night Heron was in the sloughs on the east side of Spring Lake, and, sure enough, I spotted three of them there on both days I walked this visit.

Night Heron

They certainly seem to favor the pea-green, algae-filled waters found on both sides of Spring Lake.

This is, however, the first time I’ve ever seen an American Bittern at either lake,

American Bittern

and I doubt I would have spotted it at all if I hadn’t seen it fly in by the boat launch area on the south end of Spring Lake. They seem to be the shyest of all the herons and the hardest to spot.

Like most places I’ve visited, I grow fonder of Lake Ralphine and Spring Lake the better I get to know them.

Call It “Rest and Recreation”

I suspect only someone as stubborn as I am would insist on continuing to write about a novel read last year before commenting on more recent readings, but A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man struck some deep chords with me, though they’re probably not the same chords that Joyce intended to strike when he wrote the novel.

The novel got me thinking about Sin and prostitution in ways I haven’t thought about them in many years. Since I didn’t attend church regularly as a youth, I’ve never considered many things “sinful,” seeing them, instead, as moral issues. “Do unto others as you would have them do to you” always served as my life’s guideline, and I’ve done my best to follow that rule throughout my life — which is not to say that I have always managed to do so.

Although the Catholic Church would definitely think otherwise, I feel like I’ve only sinned once in my life, and apparently most Churches don’t even consider what I did a “sin.” On the other hand, I’ve slept with a prostitute once and didn’t consider it a sin then, even if, in retrospect, it seemed like a mistake, one I wouldn’t commit again and wouldn’t have done then if I’d known more about prostitution in Thailand.

These two events converged during a five-day leave in Thailand at the end of my tour of duty in Vietnam. When my tour of duty was about over, I was eligible to go on R&R to Thailand. I argued that it should go to those who had another 6 months of duty, but the officer in charge insisted that I’d “earned” the leave. So, in the end, I took it because I’d been relieved of my command and didn’t have much to do otherwise.

The trip didn’t start very auspiciously. When we got on the plane we were handed a very large bottle of Thai Beer. No one bothered to tell me it wasn’t the usual American 3% alcohol, but a strong 10% brew. I suspect by the time I got off the plane I was already drunk and managed to stay that way most of the time I was in Bangkok, especially since it was the custom to offer a beer in nearly every shop we stopped at.

There was only one other officer on the plane, a Captain whose name I don’t think I even remembered by the end of the trip, though I remembered his actions quite vividly. We had been given adjoining rooms at the hotel, and he took charge almost immediately. I was only a 1st Lieutenant, had never been on R&R before, and had never been in a foreign country, so I wasn’t opposed to letting him set things up. Before I knew it we had hired a taxi to be at our beck-and-call throughout our entire stay, the driver sleeping in his taxi in case we wanted something. Soon our entire five days were booked, and I toured some of Bangkok’s greatest treasures, including the Golden Buddha and the Reclining Buddha. We had an “authentic” Thai feast at an up-scale officer’s club, bought Thai silk for presents and toured the rivers where people lived as they had throughout time.

One night in the middle of drinking, the Captain told our taxi driver we needed a couple of prostitutes. I was either too drunk or too intimidated to protest. Besides, I wasn’t married, and it certainly seemed like a Thai custom. After all, the lobby of the expensive hotel where we were staying had been lined with Thai girls dressed as Indian maidens and cheerleaders when we signed in — and it wasn’t even Halloween. Hell, it was nearly Christmas.

Unlike Stephen in the Portrait of the Artist, I ended up finding the whole experience particularly repugnant and needed a whole lot more beer to spend the night with someone who could barely speak English, so much beer that the evening was barely a memory by morning, though I vaguely remember looking up at the skylight early the next morning and seeing, or perhaps imagining, a giant lizard crawling across it.

As if that night wasn’t bad enough, the next night as we were getting ready to return to Vietnam the Captain, who was Catholic, panicked in the middle of dinner and started asking where he could find a Catholic Priest so he could go to confession before returning to his unit in Vietnam, suddenly afraid he would die in mortal sin and end up in Hell.

I wanted no part of that. I sobered up instantly, wondering why anyone would commit what they thought was a mortal sin knowing death was a daily companion where we were going. I never did find out if he found his priest. As I’ve thought it over, both immediately afterward, months later, and even years later, I thought what we were doing in Vietnam was a greater sin than sleeping with a prostitute for one night, no matter how others might view it.

Even though I didn’t come close to committing any atrocities and don’t think I even managed to kill a single Viet Cong, despite constantly shooting back at snipers who haunted our nights, fighting that war against a people who simply wanted self-rule seemed to me, particularly in retrospect, to be a Sin, one I’ve spent much of my life trying to redeem. There are undeniably “Just Wars” and I am certainly no pacifist, but Vietnam simply wasn’t one of them. I still suffer from a collective guilt that most Americans won’t admit, a guilt that many of my fellow Vietnam vets seemed unable to recover from.

When I read years later how Thai prostitutes were procured, often sold at a young age by poor rural families to earn much-needed money, I regretted that I managed to contribute to that injustice, but it seems to me that the greatest sin belongs to the Thai people who allow that practice to continue. Knowing what I know now, I would certainly never consider having sex with one of them, but I knew nothing of that when I was first there.

My short experience with prostitution makes it impossible for me to identify with Stephen when he chooses “life experiences” over Church doctrines. Hell, it even makes it impossible for me to identify with Ulysses’ Bloom, who’s twice as appealing as Stephen, even if he seems to visit the whorehouse because he’s being cuckolded by his wife and because he’s unable to have sex with her after the death of his son. It’s hard for me to believe that sex without love isn’t just plain wrong. It’s ironic, to me at least, that my views of prostitution are much closer to the Catholic views than to Joyce’s views, despite my refusal to see it as a mortal sin. I don’t think I believe in Heaven or Hell, but it seems to me that using people to satisfy your own personal needs without considering its effects on them leads to personal, if not eternal, damnation.

Snowy Egrets

Since I never see Snowy Egrets here in the Pacific Northwest, I’m always pleased when I get a chance to photograph them close-up as I did at Lake Ralphine on my recent trip. I often have seen this one near the boat dock, hunting the edge of the lake.

I’ll have to admit that I’m so used to seeing them in California sunshine that I think of them as being brilliantly white, as shown in this shot against the blue water.

Snowy Egret

It’s no wonder that it’s beautiful feathers were once sought after by rich and fashionable ladies.

Since this one often poses on the rocks near the edge of the lake, I’ve had good luck getting shots of its legs and feet,

Snowy Egret

which still fascinate me. I was amazed to realize that they actually have toenails on those four toes.

I usually discard shots where I’ve cut part of the bird out of the frame, but I really liked this headshot of the egret hunting in the shade.

Snowy Egret

I’m just glad I’m not the frog or fish that he’s hunting, as it seems more ferocious than beautiful from this angle.

Mute Swans at Lake Ralphine

Birding-wise, the highlight of my recent trip to Santa Rosa had to be the two Mute Swans that elegantly paddled towards the boat launch on Lake Ralphine where I stood.

Swans do overwinter in the Puget Sound area, but you seldom see them in pairs and, more importantly, they maintain their distance. This pair had obviously grown accustomed to crowds of people and were largely indifferent to me.

Mute Swans

In fact, they swam so close to the boat launch where I stood that I had to constantly back up to keep them in the picture frame.

Mute Swan

They were harder to find on my second visit and the lighting was even more challenging as they were in a heavily shaded area at first, but I ended up getting just as close and managed to get some different shots.

Swan

I liked this high-contrast, nearly black and white shot almost as much as I do this profile in the same light.

Swan

I even managed to get this shot for those who prefer their Swans on the more traditional blue water.

Mute Swan

I was thrilled to get these shots, but disappointed to read online that Mute Swans are considered an invasive species by many environmental groups, some even suggesting their numbers be reduced in an attempt to restore native species to their traditional numbers. I suspect some Native Americans would feel the same about non-natives, but it seems like an awfully beautiful species to eradicate, and not too different from the native species.