I remember the first time I saw a great blue heron. I was riding on the back seat of a motorcycle in the early 1980s on a rural two-lane road between Austin and Dripping Springs, and the driver stretched out his arm and pointed. A large blue gray bird was majestically beating its wings, floating above a great field alongside the road.

Everything went into pause, an expansiveness, a wildness, the heron in the blue clouded sky, and us on the bike, traveling on parallel, synchronous courses. The bird was in its ancient space and we in our industrial world, holding on to the sacred moment.