Geese

Geese: 

perhaps with the exception of squirrels and robins, I most often see geese on my morning walks, they will be spread out from the pond and occupying small fields and lawns, or sometimes in a short flight above my house as they travel between the various nearby ponds. When I was a kid they were less frequent visitors, more true in their migrations and traveling great distances between their seasonal homes. I loved hearing their honking communication and catching sight of their V-formation of flight. For me this was a true touch of wildlife, a sign of deep wilderness, as they were travelers, not meant to stay too near my suburban home for any length of time. 

it was a thrill to hear them or glimpse them overhead...

my own wild streak active in imagination. 

yet over the years they have made my neighborhood their home, some only migrating short distances to escape the heat of summer or the colder days when the pond might freeze. I can count on seeing them daily, their my geese now, part of my home, belonging to my heart. What I've read is that there are two distinct types of geese here, true migratory birds that overwinter between their long distance flights, and year round residents that have made this area their home for many generations. They are ancestors of geese from a reintroduction program dating back decades to a time when there was great worry about the species surviving in Maryland at all due to aggressive hunting and damage to their habitat. This area is now truly their home, no need to travel great distance. 

everything they need is here. 

I like knowing that theirs still a wild flock above, seasonal, and that I will only catch sight of them, or hear their navigational honks only a few times a year. There's still a wild streak in my imagination, a longing to know a true wilderness even if it's so far above in flight and distant sound. It remains a thrill, an actual physical sensation activated by their call, as if I'm meant to surrender all I'm doing now and join them in their flight. 

and the wildness of my imagination...

I always do. 

there's no less love for the geese that stay year round. They've chosen this as their home, the little pond that offered me a place to roam since I was a child. They're still wild too - and I imagine the same thrill strikes a chord in their imagination whenever they hear their kinship calling from above. But for whatever reason they remain, safer here, more familiar. 

home. 

even as they're urged in flight...

from a wildness calling from above. 

~

Peace, Eric