For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to fly. I was barely 7 years old when the movie Peter Pan came out. I can still clearly remember the blue breakfast nook in the kitchen. I would jump off the cushion over and over again, thinking happy thoughts, convinced that if I believed hard enough, I’d be able to fly like Wendy, John, and Michael.  

Many years later I began having dreams about flying. They were so real, so thrilling, that I hated waking up from them. In the early ones I could barely get my belly off the ground and I was worried that people would see me. As I got older, the dreams evolved, as did my imaginary flying skills. I realized that I didn’t need to flap my arms, I learned to glide, like the birds. I lost my fear of staying close to the ground and began to go higher and higher. I loved seeing the cities and countryside below. In the final dream, sometime in my early thirties, I remember flying so high that I was able to see the earth, and it was utterly breath-taking.  For some reason I decided to let go and stop flying, but rather than plummeting to the ground I found myself falling effortlessly into my own orbit, gently circling the earth.  It was an unforgettable dream, and sadly, the last time I ever dreamt about flying. 

This winter I had the unbelievable privilege of living amongst thousands of creatures for whom flight is natural. It was so intimate and prolonged that I was able to witness a whole generation of the Egyptians and Muscovys grow from babies to mature adults. I watched the Ibis use their feet to feel around for apple snails and then use their long beaks to poke into the shells and drag out the little black snails. I even watched, and photographed, a giant Anhinga gobble a sunfish whole, swallow by swallow, until it was just a fish-like shape in his throat. But what has most captured my heart and imagination is watching the Egrets and Great Blue Herons take flight. I become like that child again, the one who longed to fly, and perhaps still does. I’m enchanted by their massive wings, the texture of their feathers, and the delicate strands that fall around their legs like gossamer skirts. 

Trying to photograph them was a huge challenge and learning experience. I often felt like a hunter, waiting, hopeful, but inevitably surprised when one of them decided to take off. I pressed the camera to my eye as if it were a gun sight and swung my body to follow them as if I were tracking prey. But unlike hunters, I sought only to record, not kill.  The whole experience was over in a matter of seconds, often with just half a dozen frames. Although I always checked immediately to see if I’d caught anything, it was only when I looked at them later on my big screen that I experienced that frisson of joy and excitement I always felt from the unfettered freedom and graceful flying in my dreams.   Though I have no wings, I do have my imagination, and sometimes it enables me to momentarily escape the cage of this heavy human body, let go of solid ground, and rise up to see the world from a much more expansive perspective.