One 'wild' road trip to the mid-Atlantic

Leaving my hotel in Delaware last Monday morning, the car pulled past one of the countless strip malls that seem to dot the flat, industry-based state, I saw a sight I was quite unaccustomed to.

It wasn’t the great blue heron that was so foreign, but rather its surroundings. Wedged between that strip mall, less than 15 yards from the four-lane highway on one side and the mall parking lot on the other, was a small pond.

Staking out that pond for lunch was that great blue heron.

Later that same day, while at a rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike, I nearly lost my head to some low-flying birds.

Those birds?

Red-winged blackbirds, usually seen here in central Maine on the tallest available branch, scoping out open fields. They are remarkably territorial, but in New Jersey, they seemed to have become so accustomed to humans that they were literally flying around at shoulder height just inches away.

So, that got me thinking.

When we see a great blue heron floating in the skies overhead here at home, we tend to equate that experience with some majestic, pure, untainted natural being -- something of a symbol representing our quality of life.

The same could be said for the red-winged blackbirds we see perched on the highest growth over wetlands. Or the deer we see bounding along the side of the road.

But it occurred to me after the trip to Delaware and back that not everybody in every part of the country necessarily sees such signs of wildlife in the same vein.

Which makes me evermore thankful for the fact that our wilderness, our wildlife, remains, well, wild.