FIFTEEN GUESTS and two guides left the Friends of the Rappahannock office in an old converted olive-green school bus and made their way to the Crow’s Nest property to observe the great blue heron rookery.

We stopped at the side of a road near a bridge that spanned a marsh full of wonderful plants and animals, including waterlilies and huge frogs. We made impromptu walking sticks of old dead wood found on the ground before we stepped into a world largely untouched by man for many years.

Our little group of men and women and one boy hiked in. The going was relatively easy as we wound our way through the flat hardwood forest with its mature trees, jack-in-the-pulpits, ferns, spicebush, mayapples, and Japanese honeysuckle. The high, thick canopy darkened our way, but certainly not our spirits.

Eventually we arrived at a bog edged with sycamore trees. High in those trees were the heron nests, which appeared to be loosely constructed of sticks. There were as many as seven nests in a single tree. Bill Micks, our leader, took a few moments to test the beaver dam for crossability and found that he sank into the mud to just over his boots. All but two of the guests chose to cross the dam to an area where we could better observe the herons.

We schlurped and picked our way gingerly and with painful slowness along the old beaver dam that snaked for about 90 feet through a clearing. Scattering around the bog, we settled at our own little places, blending quietly into our environment. Some of us had old life jackets to sit on, while others sat on other waterproof items.

I set my life jacket down on the mud against a convenient dent in a ragged little locust tree at the very edge of the dam and settled. The prehistoric feel of the place allowed me to imagine a dinosaur might rise out of the bog munching on a mouthful of delectable greens.