The Benu Bird – Sally Wier |1
The Benu Bird
by Sally Wier
There are spots along the Virgin River in southern Utah where water is caught and
collected. Though the low flow of midsummer leaves the waters merely ankle deep throughout
the length of Zion Canyon, the unique placement of large boulders and an accumulation of midsized cobbles can interrupt an otherwise smoothly flowing river and creates deep pockets and
pools. It is to these places that visitors, locals, and residents of the canyon flock when the heat of
the desert afternoon exceeds 100 degrees Fahrenheit, which it does almost daily. In the shade of
Fremont cottonwoods we dip into the cool waters of the Virgin, and are finally given a respite
from the unending summer heat.
One afternoon, heat radiating off the sandstone walls in waves, a friend and I sat on
boulders barely submerged in a swimming hole, the cool water rising to our waists, our legs
swaying freely to and fro under the buoyant influences of the water. We were having a frank
discussion about the many people in our lives - people from work, friendships, lovers, people we
loved and could not muster the courage to tell. The leaves of the cottonwoods rustled above us
and the rays of the high summer sun beat on our backs even as it gradually sank closer to the top
lip of the Streaked Wall to the west. Soon we would be in the shade. The sunlight was washing
the eastern cliffs of the canyon – the East Temple, Mount Spry, Bridge Mountain, the Watchman
- in a warm glow. All of this grand topography was so close to us, and yet in our current state of
mind we were elsewhere, worrying about people and relationships. We were not present.
There are times when we pull inside ourselves, times when we become engulfed by our
sorrows and worries, our fears. We become submerged by thought, and the larger context of our
lives is lost to us. When I feel myself drowning in the workings of my own mind I step outside. I
return to landscape. When I step out into the canyon and am wrapped around by the desert walls,
I remember the magnificence of place, of the earth which is constantly there, regardless of my
state of mind. I am refreshed by the sheer beauty and power of landscape which can rock me out
of my cerebral world so instantly, and replace me in the physical world, a soulful world, a world
of immensity of scale and of such authority. The land reminds me what I have to be thankful for.
The land teaches me how to be gracious.
Sitting at the swimming hole, our minds, like our bodies had become submerged, flooded
by thought. Yet Nature soon pulled us back, back to the world, back to that beyond our
individual selves. Unexpectedly a great blue heron flew over our heads and landed just upstream
from us, perhaps twenty-five feet or so. The topography of the river which separated us from the
bird was one of symmetry. We sat on the edge of a deep, flat pool shaped by large boulders.
Upstream, where the heron now stood, was another section of calm water as smooth as glass.
Bisecting the two placid portions of the river was a tumbling and cascading mess of riffles and
tiny rapids caused by interrupting concrete. Early Mormon settlers in the canyon had built a
small dam here to divert some of the Virgin’s waters towards crop fields above the river banks.
The rushing sound of the cascading river filled our ears, but it was the view of the bird which
filled our eyes.
The bird, as calm as the water in which it stood, moved slowly, cautiously, sometimes
hardly at all. Each step was a deliberate movement towards a perfectly planned goal, it seemed.
With each step the heron pulled its foot gingerly from beneath the crystal water, its twig-like leg
folding backwards into a crisp triangle at the knee joint. Its three long toes emerged from the
water like a gentle hand pulling a silk tablecloth upwards from the center of a circular table, the
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drapes of cloth hanging and billowing with a quiet smoothness as they fell towards earth.
The entire bird was a geometric masterpiece of lines – lines in the head and beak, lines in
the long neck and graceful body, lines in the many changing angles of its stepping legs.
Watching this bird, our talk of people fell away from our worried lips. We were freshly caught
and captivated by the closeness of this majestic bird. We watched it with rapt attention, eying its
every move.
Soon the heron slowly unfolded its large, angular wings, and in three powerful strokes it
floated its way from the crystal pool above the diversion dam into the heart of the dam's
cascades. Riffles of water swept past its tiny legs. Would the water wash the bird away? Those
tiny legs held fast and the bird stood regally poised, its eyes downcast into the water. The heron's
eyes were intent upon the rushing liquid before it. Movement ceased completely in the body of
the bird, but life burned vibrantly in the intensity in its eyes. Its stillness was yet dynamic, it was
a stillness full of anticipation, and watching the bird, we too found ourselves sitting rigidly still,
attent, and waiting.
The length of the bird’s head seemed a doubly long line with the thin, sharp beak
extending to the front and the equally long, thin, black crest feather smoothed gracefully off the
back of the skull. The length of the continuous line made the heron's head appear as a javelin.
Poised with this weapon in its body, the stillness of the bird was broken as the head darted
forward and down with the beak piercing the water in a flash of unrealized speed. We started at
the unexpected movement and cheered with joy as the bird retrieved its beak from the river and
proceeded to reposition a tiny fish between its beak and gulp the morsel down its long,
undulating throat. We were watching a master fisherman, we knew, and we sat in awe waiting
for it to repeat its act.
The elegant and angular form of the heron not only gives it an air of authority, it provides
the bird with the morphological tools it needs to survive. The beak acts as a spear for fishing, but
that spear is backed by a helpful and hidden design within the supporting neck. Unique
modifications in the vertebrae of the great blue heron allow it to safely strike its prey, whether on
land or in the water, with lightning speed. Unlike the vertebrae of a human, which stack nicely in
line behind the throat, the vertebrae of the heron assume a different shape. They create an
exaggerated S-curve which, mid-neck, actually curves in front of the esophagus and trachea of
the bird thus allowing it to dart its head forward like a dagger while simultaneously protecting
the esophagus and trachea. If, in the process of a strike, the neck were to inadvertently hit
something, the hard bone of the vertebrae would hit only the skin and muscle at the front of the
neck, not the sensitive throat. A perfect design for a master fisherman. There is an added beauty
to the bird through the realization of this sort of physiological perfection. Things are as they
should be, just the way they are. There are no mistakes in nature, and it is beautiful.
The great blue heron, Ardea herodias, is the largest and most wide-spread heron in North
America. Belonging to the heron family, Ardeidae, it is usually between 38 and 54 inches in
length. The birds often nest in trees near the water with both the males and females taking part in
nest building duties. Being near the water is ideal for these avian fishermen who prefer fish over
other foods, but will also feed upon crayfish, toads, invertebrates, reptiles, smaller birds, and
mammals such as voles and mice. With a range from Alaska to as far south as the Galapagos
Islands, these birds live in a myriad of places, but are not incredibly common to where I sit: Zion
National Park in southern Utah. When they are found here, it is not surprisingly almost always
near open water sources. Outside the national park they can be found near ponds in the town of
Springdale, or near the Kolob and Blue Springs Reservoirs. In the park itself the birds are mostly
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found along the Virgin River and its tributaries. In the canyon’s more mild seasons of spring, fall
and winter, sightings of the herons are somewhat uncommon, but in the peak of the summer
great blue herons are rarely seen. Yet sightings of the birds have been reported in all months of
the year. The only report of nesting or breeding activity in the national park, however, comes
from 1940 and was seen, not surprisingly, along the riparian corridor of the Virgin River. This
summer sightings of the birds don't seem nearly so rare. What is bringing them here on a more
regular basis? Likely it is the fish of the Virgin River, but no one knows for sure. But whatever
the reason, it was with rapt excitement that we watched this stunning and majestic bird moving
right before us in the water.
As we watched the slow but precise process of the heron's darting and piercing bill as it
danced in and out of the water I could not help but think of Ancient Egypt. This elegant bird
standing so regally before us reminded me of the hieroglyphic paintings from the tombs,
pyramids, and alters of the ancient civilization near the Nile. What was the history of these
birds? What did they mean to the ancient Egyptians? And why did I feel that history so strongly
present here in southern Utah thousands of years in the future?
The herons of Egypt were not and are not great blues, but rather gray herons, Ardea
cinerea. Belonging to the same family as the great blues, these birds are smaller with lengths
around 35-38 inches, and have a modern-day range throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. Yet
they still possess many of the physical characteristics and traits of the great blue of North
America: black patches on the shoulders of the wings; long, thin, black crests extending off the
back of the head; and matching plumage in both sexes of each species, not to mention the
geometry of form, and the lines of grace, which likely served to captivate the ancient Egyptians
with the regal birds. Today we know these birds served as powerful symbols to the ancient
Egyptians from the appearance of their forms in hieroglyphic scripts on tomb walls and on
papyri. The birds are typically depicted in one of two stances, either standing upright in midstride, often in a marsh or river scene, or in a sitting or crouched position on a perch.
The heron is often depicted as a symbol of the sun and solar cycles. At the ancient site of
Heliopolis, meaning “city of the sun” in Greek, the heron was the scared bird, and it has been
suggested that it is from this bird that the iconic Greek symbol of the phoenix emerged. But the
true beauty of the symbolic power of the bird to the ancient Egyptians comes through the bird's
tie to the landscape and its habitat: the water.
The creation story of Heliopolis tells of the beginning when the world consisted of
nothing but one, large, motionless, primeval ocean known as Nun. From these waters emerged
the god Atum, either as a child of Nun or as a self-generated god. Atum brought forth a pyramid
of land, a small mound of earth which rose above the waters. He also called forth light and
brought the sun to the world, leading him to be seen as a sun-god. After these acts it is told that
he then assumed the form of a gray heron, known as the sacred benu bird, and alighted on the
small mound of earth, the ben-ben. Thus the heron became the first physical form to land upon
the first earth above the mighty and wide waters of the world. In modern times (prior to the
damming of the Nile at Aswan in 1970) the naturally flooding Nile, with its inundations of
water, seasonally returned the land to one of high water. Yet inevitably land rose again from the
waters as they ebbed, and herons would be found perched upon the isolated mounds of rock and
earth which stood above the receding floods. As the land cycles through periods of high and low
water, just as the sun cycles around the earth through light and dark, so too do the herons appear
cyclically. The benu becomes a bird of rebirth, a symbol of regeneration and rejuvenation.
Back in the canyon country of southern Utah, a heron is standing in the rushing waters of
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the Virgin River, alone and solitary, its feet wrapped in riffles, its long, thin form framed by
rigidly straight walls of rock. This bird holds the power of its Egyptian relative for me. The bird
holds a quiet and subtle air about it which captures my attention, and reverence is not too strong
a word for what I feel in its presence. An upright spire of feathers, it stands amidst the creative
waters of the river which formed this canyon - a river, which like the Nile, has its own seasonal
floods, aggressive and violent, yet creative at the same time. The cutting and shaping of the
canyon by the river continues to this day. The shapes of this landscape are continually being
renewed and refreshed, banks of the river reborn, rocks in mid-stream removed and replaced by
torrents of water rushing southwards after a powerful rain. Despite the inundation of the Virgin's
waters, the herons return, singly, but return they do. Their legacy in Egypt seems perfectly
appropriate here, so many thousands of miles away in a land where changing waters under a
cycling sun are continually renewing the form of the earth on which we live. Watching this bird
go about the act of feeding upon fish, I feel a tie to the past, to past knowledge of the spirit of an
animal which even today can continue to inform my existence on this planet.
One summer evening later that season, I headed back down the canyon after a hike.
Despite the glowing beauty of sunset-light on the canyon walls, I seemed pulled inward by
thought and away from the beauty which enveloped me. But as I passed Mount Spry and
continued down along the course of the Virgin River, I looked up to my left, for reasons
unknown to me, and my eyes met the soaring and gliding form of a heron flying, at eye level,
smoothly down the canyon. In flight its body had found a new line, one of horizontal grace. The
long beak led the way, its neck folded gently back upon itself, the thin legs trailing in the wind of
its own movement. The presence of this beautiful bird, again, pulled me into the world, a world
of amazing geometric forms and wrapped so perfectly in one big circle which connects us all - I
with the heron and the heron with me. As the sun sank towards its western home for the coming
night, so too did the heron glide seamlessly down the canyon, presumably towards its own
home. Here was a bird of the sun, a bird of rebirth, cycling in its own way toward its own
completion at the end of yet another day living off the land. Gliding down the canyon together
we were a pair, one full of natural grace, and I, the other, touched by the sight of such grace,
touched by the reminder of essentials in a reality that was, at that moment, gilded in beauty.