116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
In search of his spirit animal
Wild Side column: Smallmouth bass a favorite animal, but probably not a good idea
Orlan Love - correspondent
Apr. 10, 2024 12:04 pm
It was just a few stylized lines on the skin over her deltoid — long skinny legs and long pointed beak connected by a graceful S-curved neck, the ink an appropriate shade to depict a great blue heron.
I said I really like your tattoo, and she said it was her spirit animal, which set me to thinking what mine might be, if indeed I have one.
While members of some cultures derive guidance, visions and lessons from their spirit animals, my relationship seldom goes beyond feelings of connection with and appreciation of their egoless atunement with their natural environment. Communing with them, even though usually at a great distance, helps me feel a part of nature rather than separate from it.
But judging from the way most wildlife species regard me, that is a difficult gap to bridge. With the exception of robins, which seem to be attracted to me when I have a hoe in my hands, wild animals keep their distance.
It being bad juju to stick sharp hooks in the mouth of a spirit animal, I promptly eliminated my favorite animal, the fierce, beautiful and unyielding smallmouth bass, with its red eyes and war-painted cheeks.
By the same logic, I eliminated two other favorite animals, the ring-necked pheasant and the wild turkey, which I still shoot for food and sport, though with each passing year I get closer to perfecting flush and release pheasant hunting.
To me, the spirit animal concept approaches a truly spiritual realm only when I experience what Neil Young must have felt when he wrote: “Big birds flying across the sky, throwing shadows on our eyes, leave us helpless, helpless, helpless.”
Slain in the spirit, some would say, by the power and mystery of nature/creation.
I get that feeling many times a year while fishing Eastern Iowa rivers. As I intently watch the point where my line enters the water, trying to steer my lure into the likeliest spots, a shadow or a reflection of an overhead bird — usually an eagle or a turkey vulture — will glide across the surface of the river, evoking Young’s poetry and the feeling it describes.
While great blue herons do not make the top 10 list of animal tattoos — butterflies and snakes head the list — I understand why the heron might be considered someone’s spirit animal.
Having fished with them most of my life, I have long admired their grace, stealth, beauty and disposition and appreciated their company as they slip downstream ahead of a slow-moving competitor.
Nothing says potential energy like a statuesque heron, tense as a drawn bow, waiting to hurl its dagger beak at prey. Though I’ve only ever seen that energy released once — it’s the definition of sudden — I have seen hundreds of white-splattered sandbars that attest to their success as predators.
Of all the wild sounds few compare with the fingernails-on-chalkboard vocalizations of a heron — you can’t call it a song unless you find throat clearing musical.
The message I get — unbefitting, I think, of a potential spirit animal — is the same sentiment conveyed in the voice and body language of most wild animals: “Go away.”