Naked as a Jaybird
Early Morning Barton Springs Swim Report
True enough I have become leery of birds. For much of my life I was indifferent; then the pandemic made me fond; then I was attacked by two geese. I can still admire some birds (just not swan geese). This morning as I arrived I saw some sort of little heron on my habitual ramp, very fine in profile, still a bird. A man arrived to swim. “Little heron there,” I said, and he said, “I’m still asleep.”
The little heron flew off and I got in the pool.
After two laps I got out, before sunrise but that ambient shift that tells you that sunrise is coming. A man got out of the pool and ambled along. From his general shape I presumed he was in his 50s or older. I see all sorts of things that turn out not be true when I swim, and even outside of the pool my brain regularly insists that somebody is naked or half naked simply because of the color of their leggings.
But this was no trick of the light or my brain or my goggles. Good for you, I thought, at my ill-lit unencumbered fellow swimmer.
When we lived in Houston, we had a garden pond in the yard and the green herons were often seen hunting the goldfish we had added. There was also a great blue heron that would perch on our roof and though I never saw it fishing in the pond, I'm pretty sure it did. We bought goldfish about half-a-dozen at a time about every month.
Fine swim. Fine writing.