May We All Be So Lucky
Canadian geese and the turning of seasons
The Canadian geese came early this year. Their first formations angled across the blue sky the last few days of August and have appeared steadily every day since. At night, outside the open bedroom window, I can hear them raise a ruckus in the neighbor’s pond and imagine them elbowing their way in for a place to sleep among the Ducks and Blue Herons. Some mornings they land on my roof at dawn with ungodly cackling and stomp around on the tin like they own the place. And they do, I suppose. I delay chores, so I don’t spook them from their on-high perch, and the chickens have to wait for breakfast. Plus, I’m pretty sure a chicken will lose in a beak to beak brawl with one of those black-headed long-flyers. It’s best not to throw scratch down until the visitors run gangly legged off the angled metal like a drunken parasailor, taking to the sky again with unlikely grace.
It’s been a long-haul, this pandemic. I have gratefully rooted down on this lovely Oregon land for nearly two years straight - the longest stretch I’ve ever gone without traveling. The geese take flight, and I feel a twinge of envy remembering what it was like to put miles behind with an open horizon ahead. I know full well their journey is more risky and less easy than mine. So many lakes and waterways have dried to cracking this summer. I wonder how these birds will make the southern leg of the voyage safely. Where will they stop to drink? What will they eat if the grasses are gone?
They teach me resilience and how to be what you are no matter the circumstances. They will fly as long as they have wings to carry them. They go home when it’s time to go home, then flock north again in the spring when that mysterious magnetic pull tugs on their DNA. Somehow, they find a way. Whenever my mind falls down the rabbit hole of despair worrying about the future of life on earth, I remember the geese.
The forecast says real rain is coming in a few days. Halle-freakin’-lu-jah! I feel like jumping up on that tin roof, stomping around, flapping my hands at the sky in applause. It’s hard not to feel scared or sad or both when walking through these thick woods of browning Ponderosa Pines and Firs, dead grass disintegrating beneath a shoe, scuffing bare dusty dirt with nothing crawling on it. I’ve never experienced a drought before. This is new territory. I turn off the shower water to soap up now and wear clothes longer to create less laundry. Flower beds in the backyard died while I devoted all the summer’s watering to food in the veggie garden. So far, the well is steady. I’m grateful and still holding my breath.
A veil of distant wildfire smoke drapes the valley like a sheer curtain hanging from the sky. My fingers grasp the latch and open the garden gate. Above the treetops, I hear honking. My eyes crane skyward in anticipation. A few seconds later, a perfect V flies over, banking a long turn around the southern end of the valley, then heads back in the direction of my neighbor’s pond. I silently thank whoever built that pond and the water for remaining. Today at least, the geese have a soft landing, a long drink of water, and some green grass at the water’s edge to get them through.
May we all be so lucky.
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I didn’t realize I needed a break until I took one. Thank you for being patient with my absent story last week. It was an intense week for many people in my orbit. I hope you and yours are all well and thriving. Take this note as a little virtual hug just in case you need one, and may the sky winds carry you gently through these days. 💕
Wow! I lived for many years in Montreal, Canada, and we would watch those geese, your geese move across the skies - and wait for them to come back at the end of winter. I never thought about them in this way. Very moving.
I love this story Michelle. The turkey vultures are beginning to gather also. I love fall!!