breakfast, ducks, heron

in brooklyn we have just finished reading the dobyns poem. you know the one. these are the first days of fall. the wind at evening smells of roads still to be traveled… but here, on the top side of the catskills, that whole season came and went in a few short weeks. a burst of color, a few gusts of wind. today we expect snow. the days are too short to plan now. you just have to see what you feel like when you wake up and hope there’s daylight enough after breakfast to get going.

we spend at least one breakfast a week sitting at a window table at a restaurant on route 28, smack in the middle of the space between margaretville and arkville. there are three tables by the window and the window hovers above the east branch delaware river which was a little ferocious this spring and summer but which sits generally in a shallow bed strewn with smooth rocks and an occasional log. opposite the restaurant, across the river, is a field, maybe full of hay, and then there’s the line of trees at the bank with root knuckles curled, clutching the dirt at the edge.

it is a good thing to have a window table all year, but starting right about now you can watch the ducks stop and rest and snack on the coldwater snacks floating by. there is a quick place in the river where ducks shoot by like on some carnival ride, always spinning around to sit sideways as the water leaps up. they seem to be laughing as they go over, beaks wide, heads back. and today i am ready to see the ducks. we head over to the only open table by the window and see a cluster of mallards, three pair, swirling around on the water but before we can even get to our seats a gray cloud drops from the sky and we watch- all of us sitting at the window- the blue tipped wings of a monstrously large heron flap as it lowers itself down into the water. the great blue heron is a pretty large bird, but when it sets down next to a pile of ducks, you really get an idea of scale. it stands near the bank, where a couple of dead trees have fallen, their brushy tops drooping over into the river. the heron wades into the middle of all that brush and disappears, becomes a few more branches in an already tangled mess.

we sit down. i get my tea and the sweetie gets his coffee and we watch. the couple sitting at the middle window table is watching, too. they are talking about the bird and i feel a little bit bad for the ducks shooting over the rapids now, clamoring for attention, getting nothing. they float and bob one at a time on down to the end of the dead tree and begin their snacking again, paddling slowly back upstream behind the trees and the heron, looking very much like teenagers when they find themselves behind a live newscast. they are looking at the heron, floating by, making faces, most likely, waving to their friends, mom, the entire duck world. i open the sugar packets. the heron hunches down. i empty them and stir my tea. the heron’s beak moves just slightly. i reach for the cold metal pitcher with milk and the heron darts into the water. it comes up with a fish, flapping and winking, wedged in its beak. It eats slowly. at least, it eats more slowly than you’d expect a bird to eat when it’s standing in freezing water with a live fish trying really hard to get out of that beak.

one of the men at the far table says they look so prehistoric and for a minute i don’t see it, but the heron seems to want to prove the point and walks, as dinosaurlike as ever anything has, around in front of the dead trees, lifting its unreal legs and moving its ridiculous neck the way dinosaurs in movies do, head wagging slowly, a little frighteningly, from side to side. predatory. impressive.

and then our favorite waitress comes to the table and sets down plates. for the sweetie some sort of hideous conglomeration called hash that he slathers with tabasco. for me, two eggs scrambled (there were at least three today) home fries, bacon, a pancake and two triangles of french toast. the french toast will go to the sweetie. as i shake pepper onto my eggs, the body of the heron seems to grow and grow. the great wings unfurl and you can almost see the gusts of wind they must create. the blue tips flap and, wavelike, the rest of the wing flaps, slowly. the bird is in no hurry. everything about it is liquid. there is no way something that shape should fly but the body moves with the wings and the legs are ribbons trailing below. it is gone before i take my first bite.