A swan is elegant. Who knows what she ponders? She sleeps in her glistening body of water, her head tucked back under her wing. Sometimes she sleeps on land for days to take care of her eggs. Outside, she finds roots, tubers, stems, and leaves, dabbling more plants for her mate, and often carrying the detritus home. Calm to cautious, she eats her food slowly, either sharing some with the others or quietly chewing the plants by herself. One photographer avoided to give up on a swan who was aiming to drown another swan, the women managed to help the poor swan, and so she had walked near the two, the attacking swan surrounding her, and shooed her gently away like a windblown kite.
I have been reading about swans lately because I saw one a few years ago. I chased a swan who stared at me, and we exchanged a long silence.
Ten minutes from my house, through the small boutiques and across the oak trees, is Lake Merritt, an amazing piece of land, where I like to go find small creatures and examine their lifestyles. Lake Merritt is also called Merritt’s Lake; it covers one thousand acres of wetlands near Children’s Fairyland with a six hundred foot outlet and a three point five kilometer walking and jogging path. In winter, migrating ducks and geese, flying high in the dark sky under the shining stars; across miles they look like sensation itself, flapping with nature’s eagerness. Now, in summer, Pelicans and Caspian terns are present. The floss silk trees have bloomed and expanded to a garden that is solid ground to settling herons, and unsteady limitations to clams, shrimps, and crabs.
So, I had went pass Children’s Fairyland, crossed the gardens of Lake Merritt, and walked the small path in all joyfulness through the oak trees and daisi...
... middle of paper ...
... thing is to follow your vocation in a distinct positive and pure way, to locate the most ideal and creative spot and plug into that pulse. This is persevering, not giving up. A swan doesn’t “give up” anything; a swan lives as she strives to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of happiness.
I think it would be remarkable, and motivating, and inspirational, to hold on to your one goal and not let it go, to swim through high lengths to find that special somebody. Then even death, where you’re going no matter what you do, cannot you part. Work for it and let it work you up overhead even, till your brain explodes and stops; let your body soak away in a quiet body of water, and let your heart liberate and scatter, loosened within the water, within the lakes and ponds, delicately, peacefully, from any height at all, from as high as the birds fly.
One thing that is unfortunate about departing this life is the lost vivacity that a person works to expand since the day they were born.
A White Heron and Other Stories. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Jewett Texts. Web. 5 Feb. 2014. .
After this lesson, I will take the students down to the pond so that we can look at the different animals that might be down there. Usually there are geese in this pond and if there are any when we are down there, I can have the students compare them to each other.
In “Death Over Water” by Elizabeth Rhett Woods, the eagle and the gull are similar to ice dancers in terms of their movement pattern and their advantages in the predation. The eagle and the gull and ice dancers maintain a short distance between each other. The eagle flies towards the gull and stays “above and behind it” (9) to utilize his advantages in the predation. Likewise, a pair of ice dancers often move together to perform lifts. The eagle following the gull’s path is similar to the ice dancers skating together. Moreover, the extended metaphor reflects their statuses in the relationships. During the predation, the eagle approaches the gull “like / the male of a pair of ice dancers” (9-10). The eagle possesses a greater strength and a
In describing the bird refuge before the flooding, Williams goes into great detail about the abundance of birds and vegetation that inhabited her paradise: “Avocets and black-necked stilts are knee deep in water alongside interstate 80. Flocks of California gulls stand on a disappearing beach…I inhale the salty air. It is like ocean, even the lake is steel-blue with whitecaps”(Williams 30). In a visit to the bird refuge with her grandmother, she describes the refuge as a place full of life, with countless birds among beautiful plants and wildlife. Indeed, the bird refuge was a sanctuary to her; there was something magical, she writes, about seeing the thousands of different birds in one place, a sight that kept her going back.
... is also clear that the white heron represents the true beauty of the region, while it is elusive and not able to be seen by even an experienced ornithologist, it is seen by Sylvia. The spotting of the white heron by Sylvia is Jewett’s way of expressing that true beauty of a region is only discoverable by those who are so familiar with the region that they can appreciate every aspect of nature’s beauty and once every foot of ground is known, only then can one appreciate the true beauty of the region and in this case that beauty is represented by the white heron. Jewett’s A White Heron is an excellent example of local color literature because it represents everything local color literature should. It contains characters and dialect specific to the region of Maine (Mrs. Tilley) as well as excellent descriptions of the topography of Maine and the beauty of the region.
In John Updike’s poem “The Great Scarf of Birds”, he uses diction and figurative speech to depict the beautiful autumn season to show how inspiring and uplifting nature is to man. Updike chooses autumn as the season to set his story in because generally, it is the season that has the most vivid vibrant colors in nature such as the ripe apples which are described as “red fish in the nets (limbs)”. (Line 3) Updike paints the picture of the beauty of nature with the simile about the apples to show the reader what a powerful effect nature has on man. Updike goes on to discuss the elm trees that were “swaying in the sky” (Line 7) and the “dramatic straggling v’s” of geese. Updike uses these descriptive portrayals of na...
The Chinese people experienced rapid changes, in government and their own culture in the 20th century. In the book, Wild Swans, by Jung Chang, she depicts the experiences of not only oppression and suffering, but the development of the communist revolution, under Mao. Also, to show how the Chinese people, women in particular, fought against impossible odds by interweaving historical and personal stories from the twentieth century China.
The crew commonly sees sea gulls near the dinghy and the gulls are a source of anger for the men. The men see the gulls as “gruesome and ominous” (1335) because the birds are “uncanny and sinister in their unblinking scrutiny” (1355). The gulls represent nature’s indifference to humans. The captain wanted to knock the bird away, but the dinghy could easily be capsized, so he was stuck powerless against the gulls. The gull sat down on the captain’s head as if the man was an inanimate object. This shows that man is unable to change nature and that we are s...
In Milun, a swan is used as a messenger. A swan represents a transformation, as in from "ugly duckling' into a beautiful swan.
Since its first appearance in the 1886 collection A White Heron and Other Stories, the short story A White Heron has become the most favorite and often anthologized of Sarah Orne Jewett. Like most of this regionalist writer's works, A White Heron was inspired by the people and landscapes in rural New England, where, as a little girl, she often accompanied her doctor father on his visiting patients. The story is about a nine-year-old girl who falls in love with a bird hunter but does not tell him the white heron's place because her love of nature is much greater. In this story, the author presents a conflict between femininity and masculinity by juxtaposing Sylvia, who has a peaceful life in country, to a hunter from town, which implies her discontent with the modernization?s threat to the nature.
Smith, Gene. "Lost Bird." American Heritage 47.2 (1996): 38. MAS Ultra - School Edition. EBSCO. Web. 6 Apr. 2015.
I used to go there to be alone or to dream with my eyes open admiring the blue sky or the clouds. I liked to go there to lay down on the grass, listen to the wind, kiss the flowers and watch the leaves moving. It was hard to go up the hill to get there, but I wanted to see everyday my seven trees, to see how the color of the leaves changed and to feel the softness of the grass.
I wandered around the path near the lake because it was always peaceful and quiet there in the morning and the trees that hung over the wide walkway only drew me in more. The cool wind blew continuously, and some of the leaves that barely hung on to the branches were pulled along with it. They floated while dropping slowly, and one of the leaves chose my head as a landing spot. I brushed my hair with my hand, not caring if doing so messes up my hair, since the wind already accomplished that job the second I took a step outside my house.
... that you can be each day that goes by. Personal excellence is not an intention; it is a way of living, a religion, something you eat, drink and breathe, something ingrained deep within your soul. Excelling is not about searching for excuses to show things can’t get done. It’s about caring more than others think is wise; risking more than others think is safe; dreaming more than others think is practical and expecting more than others think is possible. Excellence is not a skill, it’s an attitude; it is not an act, but a habit.