The Significance of Geese

For about the last two weeks, I have been coming home from work and going right to the boat house. It was the hot spell, I guess. I get out of the car, get the mail, drop it off in the house, check the cat's food and water and give him a little scritch, then head right for the dock. I have a quick cooling-off dip, grab something to eat and settle in for a bit of a nap. When I get up, usually after 20 minutes or so, I ride around the lake on my bike and get all hot, so I go for another dip. Maybe I finish the puzzles in today's paper. Then, when the sun is still 15 or so degrees above the hill across the lake, I head out for a spin in the kayak. I get back well before dark and get something more substantial to eat and have it out on the dock, watching the stars come out, nice and cool.

When the hot spell broke, I was already in these habits, and they required little modification. Today, though, I went up to Barnes & Nobel after work to look for something specific, but of course I was there over an hour. So the evening was a bit compressed, and I didn't do the bike ride. It was too cool for swimming, but I took the kayak on a long run the full length of the lake. It was a good day for it - not so many motor boats and a nice sky. By the time I settled into the evening's reading, it was well beyond dark, and a bit cool to sit on the dock. So I put a bit of music on and sat just inside the open sliding glass door - it looked and felt like I was outside, but the breeze was deflected. It was nice.

Some time around eleven I guess, I heard a strange noise. It didn't take me long to figure out is was a flock of geese. I turned down the music and went out on the dock to look up. I could hear them all right - they were loud and ominous. I couldn't see them, though; the waxing moon was still behind the trees at my back. They sounded pretty low, but there was definitely a good size flock of them, from all the noise. Following the sound, I guessed they were heading a bit south of east. I hope they weren't headed south; it's not yet the middle of August!

I guess I should mention that geese, well, not individual geese, but flocks of flying geese, have a certain significance for me, though I don't suppose it's unusual. When I was a kid, I fairly lived for summers. You'd understand that if you lived on the lake year 'round and didn't see many people in January. So I'd greet them with whoops of joy in the spring, and in the fall I'd yell up at them, "Wrong way! WRONG WAY!!!" They never listened. But when you're a kid, the geese just marked what was coming next - winter or summer, for ever and ever, into the future - just the next one in an infinite stream of changing seasons.

When I got older, it occurred to me that when the geese flew over, they marked the passage of time. Then for a while, in addition to the passing of time, they marked a certain desperation for me - another year gone by and nothing had changed. It was more than that melancholy thing that some folks feel when they get a whiff of leaves burning in the fall (back when you could burn leaves). But I worked through that, not without some pain, and change did indeed come. And the significance of the geese reverted back into the passing of time, but without the desperation. I don't suppose they will ever be restored to the sense that they merely mark the change of season in an infinite series, like the tick (north, spring) tock (south, winter) of a clock, for one comes gradually to the point in one's life when things seem to be less and less infinite.

So when I hear the geese, I always look for them, even at night. It's an instinctual reaction that has become, for me, a reminder that time IS passing, and it's NOT infinite, so I'd better take stock of things and see how my life is proceeding and how things are getting along.

"Pretty well, all things considered," I thought, as I poured just a little more wine and settled back down in my chair to finish the book. I didn't turn the music back on, though. The gentle lapping of the water and the moonlight emerging behind me were enough company, or nearly enough, now that the noisy crowd had left the scene.