Wild Geese, Autumn’s Emblem

In the village store, someone says, “I heard the geese go over,” and there is a moment of silence. Why this is so moving, I do not know. But all of us feel it.

Gladys Taber

Several weeks ago, as I turned to walk inside, I caught sight of a low flock of geese, honking, their wings golden, lit underneath with the glow of the setting sun as they flew southwest. It was arguably the most spectacular geese sighting I’ve ever had, a pristine moment in the midst of an ordinary week’s chaos.

My relationship with geese is hot and cold, a love/hate dynamic that extends as far back as I can remember geese. Majestic overhead, cranky on the ground; yellow fuzzballs that turn into hulking bodies whose unwieldy appearance is deceptive once you see them in flight. I recall watching “Fly Away Home” as the post-wisdom-tooth-removal pain medication wore off shortly before Thanksgiving my senior year of high school. I have distinct memories of playing hopscotch along any path of my New England college campus as I tried to dodge their goose-y droppings. When I take my daughter to “feed the ducks,” often we are actually tossing park-provided pellets to a gaggle of geese, a few ducks mixed in if we’re lucky.

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Hikes Just around the Corner

And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

– from Wendell Berry’s “The Wild Geese”

It’s funny how sometimes you can go for years living in a place before you learn certain things about it. I lived for a year in a town in Maryland, wishing for a good breakfast place. Might I add that once you move out of the metro New York area, trying to find a bagel or pizza place that satisfies cravings for either of those can feel impossible. Imagine my surprise, then, to learn after moving to another town that the first had the best bagels around.

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