Celestial Reckoning

I have been somewhat mournfully watching the Canada Geese preparing to leave the ponds close to my home.  Every day they journey out, further and further each time, stretching their beautiful wings and preparing their young for the journey ahead of them.  Imagine what it would be like to be born in the early spring, and by fall of the same year expected to undertake a flight of over a thousand miles.  Barely out of downy fluff and pinfeathers,  faced with flying all the way from Northern Alberta to Maine and then on to Mexico. 

I read a lovely account of hearing the geese moving overhead by the writer Robert James Waller.  He suggested that geese fly south in the fall and north in the spring using only Celestial Reckoning.  Navigation by the stars.  What a thought that conjured in my already over active imagination.  The lead goose takes point and it is he or she that the remainder of the flock follows, some as few as 10, some as large as 300.  Close you eyes and picture 300 Canada Geese moving overhead, wing spans of up to 6 feet, beating in a rythym as old as time itself. 

Fall signals the end of the growing season, and the beginning of the nesting cycle for those of us blessed to live in the north.  The urge to bake, to read, to curl up by the fire beckons me home;  makes me lose the urge to wander that I feel so keenly when its warm outside.

So long Canada’s.  See you in the Spring.