Herman
I wrote about the book, One Long River of Song | Notes on Wonder by Brian Doyle, during “coronatide.” I raved about it then and still absolutely adore it. I realized I could not find this book and purchased it again, then read it again. As I said the last time I wrote, it is a collection of his essays, put together after Doyle’s death.
I highlighted and quoted several of his essays in my previous blog. Today, I thought I would write about another of my favorites, “The Creature Beyond the Mountains.” Doyle wrote about sturgeons, enormous fishes that grow to tons of weight, multiple “Shaquille O’Neal” (a measure Doyle uses frequently) lengths, and incredible, unknown life spans—”more than one hundred years old, maybe two hundred years old; no one knows.”
One particular sturgeon he waxes on about is Herman. Since that first reading, my husband and I have stopped at the Bonneville Fish Hatchery in Oregon where Herman lives several times, sometimes accompanied by our granddaughters, inspired by Doyle’s essay. I read the following paragraph aloud to my husband the first time we stopped. Doyle wrote that he often stands in the corner of the viewing center and watches the various visitors who come to look for Herman.
The most memorable viewing for me that day was a young man with a small boy who appeared to be his son. The father looked like he was about nineteen, with the wispy first mustache and chin bedraggle of a teenager. The boy, wearing a red cowboy hat, seemed to be about three years old. The father tried to line the boy up for a photograph, tried to get the kid to stand still until Herman loomed into view, but the boy skittered here and there like a rabbit, the father alternately wheedling and barking at him, and finally the boy stood still, but facing the wrong direction, with his nose pressed against the glass, and the father sighed and brought his camera down to his waist at exactly the moment that Herman slowly filled the window like a zeppelin. The boy leaped away from the window and his hat fell down. No one said a word. Herman kept sliding past for a long time. Finally, his tail exited stage left and the boy said, awed, clear as a bell, Holy shit, Dad. The father didn’t say anything and they stood there another couple of minutes, both of them speechless, staring at where Herman used to be, and then they walked up the stairs holding hands. *
Awe is kind of having a moment right now, I’ve noticed. I read quite a bit about awe and its beneficial effects on our psyches. The subtitle of this book, Notes on Wonder, hints that the essays therein evoke a lot of awe. The objects of awe around us remind us of God’s love, his over-abundant, overflowing love. So many things could be perfectly fine without also being beautiful. Something small like a snowflake. Snowflakes don’t “need” (as far as I know) to be crystals with an endless originality one from another. Even something as mundane as pouring the water for my morning latte into my cup fills me with awe at its diamond-shaped design flowing from the spout. What evokes awe in you?
The first time we went to Bonneville Fish Hatchery it was closed because of Covid, but we still got to drive through the beautiful Columbia Gorge.
One of our visits with the girls.
* One Long River of Song | Notes on Wonder by Brian Doyle. Back Bay Books; Little, Brown & Company. Copyright 2019 by Mary Miller Doyle.