"Herons are bigger than egrets, though they have the same long legs. My father said one with an eight-foot wingspan flew over his boat. I would like to be shadowed by something that big. It would seem   like poetry, just out of reach, moving and making a bare flush of wings, and I would think of it long after, the way it was heading away from me. My longing would not be satisfied even if I could   grab its scrawny legs in my hand, even if it nuzzled up to me." --excerpt from No Heron   The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved.