Graced by the quiet and concentrated company of a heron and Henry Bugbee in the Cambridge University Botanic Garden

On Thursday afternoon I was graced by the close, quiet and concentrated company of a heron fishing in the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. It's very way of being put me in mind of a powerful passage written by the philosopher Henry Bugbee in his extraordinary book “The Inward Morning” (University of Georgia Press, 1999, p. 87):

Now the river is the unborn, and the sudden fish is just the newborn — whole, entire, complete, individual, and universal, The fisherman may learn that each instant is pregnant with the miracle of the new-born fish, and fishing in the river may become a knowing of each fish even before it is born. As he fishes the ever-flowing current, it teaches him of the fish even before it is born, just in so far as this alert fishing involves “abiding in no-abode”, or  the “unattached mind”. If one is steeped in the flowing river and sensitized through the trembling line, one anticipates the new-born fish at every moment.

Just click on a photo to enlarge it. Both photos were taken with an iPhone 6+ and the Blackie App and, of course, a certain amount of patience.