Epilogue

for RuBoard

Walking back from the Memorial, I meandered through the trees and the jogging trails skirting the water. Night had set in, and I was somehow melancholy for the friend I'd seen soar away in such a harried rush. As I broke the tree line and came into the clearing, a joyous sight met my eyes: a white heronmy white heronin swift grace descending the Monument and heading straight for me. He rose and dipped, in elegant control, his wings catching this waft and that, until he approached the perch from which he'd launched. I watched as he swooped up to light upon the branch, then abruptly changed his mind and headed on out of sight over the Memorial, down toward the fertile waters of the Potomac. As he flew away, I realized that he was doing what he'd always donebefore Lincoln, before Washington, before man even. And as I watched him soar so freely , I recalled the words of the French writer and aviator, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, "A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." ^[29] The heron, in its simple elegance , was perfecta gift from Nature to the world.

^[29] De Saint-Exupery, Antoine. Wind, Sand and Stars . Harvest Books; London, 1967. Page 21.

for RuBoard