Easy Does It

Flying lessons have been going on here. The other morning I was standing at the sink in our upstairs bathroom watching Richard down below clad in his shorts and furry topped rubber boots, clomping from coop to coop, cleaning up, chatting with the various birds as he did, and then a quick succession of squawks sent our eyes skyward. The entire Canada Goose family were taking their first flight together! I looked back down to Richard who stood in the doorway of the chicken coop, a study in joy, his face a mix of a smile and open-mouthed awe. The flight was very Kitty Hawk, over as quickly as it began, not much height or distance covered. One of the goslings wiped out on landing, skidding across the gravel of our driveway on his chest, but immediately righting itself, dusting itself off and rejoining the group, none the worse for wear. The goal was to fly from the rise behind our house to the pond (a goal they’re now achieving with ease.) But not bad for a first flight, not bad at all.
I wondered if the goslings had had any warning from their parents, any inkling that something momentous was about to happen? Is it even momentous to them? Did the parents even know what was going to happen? Maybe instinct just took over and they didn’t question it. One moment they’re all feeding on the hill – what took them to the top of the hill they don’t spend any time figuring out -- and the next moment the adults call out, take to the air, and something inside of the goslings says “That’s where I should be. Go!” and they join them. I love that about nature, one’s nature. Something inside says “This is what we do, we’re geese, we fly.” And the next moment they’re airborne! An innate trust in wings. Glorious!

But what about our geese? Schmul and Mary Ann and Ginger and Daphne and Felicity and Prince Miskin? What happens when they get that self-same calling to “Fly! Fly!!” and they can’t. Does it hurt their feelings? Do they feel “less than” when they see the Canadians up in the air when all they can do is flap their wings and run fast? Do they get caught up in comparing themselves and end up the loser, feeling “not enough?” Is there such a thing as a goose inferiority complex?

(A moment of pondering)

Nah!

First of all, this isn’t a Disney animated feature. They’re geese! Not a lot of thought and feeling going around in those goose heads. Just “Where do I eat?” and “I’ll shit here.” And second, knowing our bunch, they probably think THEIR version of “flying” is THE way. Maybe flapping their wings and running like nitwits is THEIR calling. That way they get to feel the best of both worlds – the flap of flying while still staying grounded. Who needs to be up in the sky anyway? Very overrated.

My spirit has felt very earthbound lately, and I don’t mean grounded. Nothing seems to be calling my spirit to fly, I have no desire to do much of anything. Things get done, I do things but nothing excites or stirs me. I know this mood, it has visited many times in my life, a mixture of restlessness and frustration and ennui. There may be a reason for the mood’s visit, there may not be. It doesn’t matter. It’s here. And coming along for the visit are its best friends: perfectionism, impatience, and persecution. This too shall pass, I know that. Usually I want to force it to pass, but this time I’m trying, to the best of my ability, to let it be, to let it run its course, and try to rise above it. Easy does it. Easy does it. Easier said than done. I do take solace from nature – mourning doves cooing, our cats napping, our garden growing, eggs hatching, our sweet turkeys following us around, even the one injured in a recent raccoon attack hobbles over to come see me. These all buoy my spirit. But when I see our geese incessantly picking fights with the Canadians in the latest chapter of turf wars like a bad road show of “West Side Story,” I start to wonder if my inner complaining discontent is catching? Am I responsible? Yeah, Dan, right. Ah well. And while I’m on it, the Canadians are so zen compared to our geese who complain and stir up drama and distress all the time. They would’ve been right at home at the health care town meetings last August.

Our geese disappeared yesterday. They weren’t on the pond. They weren’t anywhere on our property. Sometimes they wander over to our neighbor Royce’s, so I went to check over there. No sign of them. Now Richard began to get concerned too. After all, one of Royce’s nephews near here had his Pilgrim geese snatched from his barnyard in broad daylight last year by some goose napping no-gooder. And then we noticed that the Canada Geese were gone as well. “They followed the Canadians over to Ron and Tabitha’s pond,” Richard divined. That’s down the road a quarter mile and then down a hill, it’s the pond we took our trout last summer in a mad Dunkirk at dusk when we were draining our pond. So I went to investigate, down the road and down the hill, and just as the pond came into view it was as if a hidden assistant director on a nature show shoot whispered “Cue the geese” into his walkie-talkie and both goose families swam placidly out from behind the reeds and cattails. And the Canadians were now our geese’s best friends. As I stood watching, both groups took turns doing their best synchronized swimming routines, and all this while not only acting as chums, but acting as if I wasn’t even around. Academy Awards should’ve been handed out for a new category of ensemble goose acting. I left them to continue practicing their craft.

There is grace in the most unexpected places.

The other afternoon, Richard and I went kayaking on a friend’s pond near here. The pond’s on the land of an old camp that our friend along with 20 others invested in in order to preserve its beauty and prevent a planned development. My mood had been as heavy as the humidity that day, but the moment we set off from shore … bliss, as if it had been waiting for me in the air. It lifted a smile out of me, like a magician’s trick, presto chango! Everything was instantly light. And as I cut through the clear glass surface of the water, Richard chuckling behind me, I had a sweet memory that it had been a summer in New England 20-some years ago when I’d first kayaked, on Merry Meeting Lake in Southern New Hampshire at my friend Derek’s place. And like then, there was a swinging rope across the way (in New Hampshire you had to take a motor boat, crossing several connecting lakes to arrive at it, but here it was less than a 5 minute paddle away). A black rope was fastened high up in a good, tall tree and Richard and I took turns grabbing the rope in our hands, scaling up the large, granite boulders near shore, and then, giggling, swinging out over the lake and at the height of the arc letting loose with a shout or a squeal for a split second of flight and splashing down into the cool embrace below. Ecstasy!

(Oh, just as I wrote this, another set of squawks made me look up in time to see the Canadians flying over the front screen porch, the goslings wobbling a little in mid-air as they maneuvered past the telephone and power lines across the road, and then landing perfectly on the surface of our pond. There was an immediate jabber of what I labeled excitement and a flutter of wing flaps to congratulate themselves on a job well done. Well done.)

Have a good, flight-filled day.