War is months of boredom
punctuated by moments of sheer terror.
No, it’s sailing.
Sailing is 90% boredom
punctuated by 10% sheer terror.
No, it’s baseball.
It’s like life in that there are prolonged periods
of boredom and monotony,
punctuated by intense moments
of excitement and sometimes terror.
No, it’s flying.
Flying is hours and hours of boredom
sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror.
No, for goodness sake, it’s a PhD dissertation. What it is, clearly, is a meme, and one that was well-established before we even had that word for the phenomenon. The Great War has pride of authorship in the modern era, but what would you bet that Hannibal’s legions weren’t writing home with a similar sentiment?
Bro, I’m telling you,
shepherding elephants through the Alps
was weeks–weeks, I’m telling you–
of unrelenting boredom.
Our only break was
a few moments of sheer terror.
There are good psychological reasons why people seem to like to make this claim for their own occupation, but I don’t know what they are. They could be similar to what drives Canadians in each region to boast about the fickleness of their own weather.
You don’t like the weather?
Just wait 15/10/5 minutes!
Or maybe it’s less psycho-logical than actual-logical. Maybe, indeed, most of life is actually long periods of boredom/tedium/drudgery punctuated by moments of something else: terror, in the worst case; excitement or delight, in the best. Which brings us to last week’s photo-shoot with a great blue heron.
Herons, great blue and otherwise, hunt for fish and frogs and slimy critters by standing absolutely still in one spot, stepping verrrry slowly to another spot, standing absolutely still again, and then jabbing almost faster than my eye can follow. Sometimes all they get for their troubles is water up their nose, but remarkably often they get a presumably tasty bite. This split-second lurch–zero to sixty, as it were–presents a photographic challenge, especially when the bird moves (as it so often does) in and out of dappled shade at the edge of a pond. Under these lighting conditions, a good shot of the bird in stealth mode needs a long exposure. Contrariwise, a good shot of the bird in attack mode needs a super-short exposure that–even if the light supports it–requires me to change my settings verrrry, um, quickly.
As usual, I take what I get: on this day (with its low-light and changing-light conditions as the sun was alternately exposed and obscured by completely undisciplined, drifting, white, fluffy clouds) what I got was exclusively long-exposure stealth-mode shots. And now you get what I took.
What do these long periods of boredom punctuated by lightning strikes offer the various participants in this activity? The heron gets a beak-but-not-a-belly-full and the chance to keep doing it. The critters on the menu get terror that I hope is fleeting. And I get lasting delight, under any and all lighting conditions.
Maybe the point of your rumination (not about the herons) is to use those periods of boredom to prepare yourself for the occasional moments of terror. Or chaos, or whatever. To enjoy a trade wind that keeps the bowsprit pointed in the right direction, while getting battened down for the gale that’s sure to come, someday. The middle of a typhoon is not the best time to wonder where you left your cellphone or your hearing aids.
Jim T – Well, it’s a good point, at least. 🙂
Wonderful photos! You are indeed an accomplished and patient photographer. Those lighting conditions were their own kind of terror – and you perservered to gain prizes well worth having.
Judith – Many thanks. It’s funny – patience doesn’t seem to enter into it, at least not in the moments or half-hours. That is to say, that’s not what I feel – it just feels right. Patience is, however, often required of those who wait for me!
I have marvelled at the persistent stillness of a great blue heron during the down-lake to up-lake trek, perhaps 15 minutes, past its chosen hunting spot. I cannot fathom whether part of its time is designated for basking in the sun or whether all of its time is the learned response to what it takes to get enough food in a day to keep alive. Perhaps either purpose is exemplary for humans, who bring psycho-logical (love that!) motivations into their efforts at logical reasoning.
Laurna – It’s a good question. Sometimes they do seem to just stand around, basking; sometimes the standing-around seems to be a clear part of a hunting/fishing sequence. I’d have to know a lot more about them than I do to disentangle that.
Your musing about boredom then terror reminds me of something that happened just yesterday. Julia and I were driving on the Queen Elizabeth Way east of Burlington. On our way home so it wasn’t an exciting trip…boredom. Suddenly a pickup truck came roaring by on our right hand side, heading for an exit. As the truck was about 20 feet past my van a metal chair came flying out of the back of the pickup truck. The boredom turned to…well, maybe not terror, but immediate concern. Fortunately, the chair bounced to the right; had it bounced to the left it would have come right through our windshield. Might well have been terror then.
Tom
Tom – Oh my goodness, that’s scary. Glad that it turned out OK.
It was scary.
Tom
Very nice study of a heron on the hunt. I guess they are too involved to get bored….
Jim R – 🙂 I think that’s true – he (?) did seem focused on his mission. Being made of less focused stuff, I might well have gotten bored before his position and the light came together well enough!