Geese across my path.

Driving on a usual road one morning, I was delayed by a group of geese friends walking across my path from the field bordered by trees where they sleep each night, to the side of the road where the creek flows. These mid July mornings are cool. A few days the humidity is low. There’s no bite to the air as in mid October. It is warm but if you don’t have to load a truck, you remain cool.

This small welcome delay has occurred before. Once in the afternoon with a friend, we were headed back from the errand. I had my camera with me and the geese group was heading to the field rimmed by trees. Cars approaching us stopped as we did. Five minutes after we had stopped all webbed feet were in the grass, standing as they often do, conversing with one another about all matters of interest to geese.

This morning the lead goose had gotten half way into my lane and I could have quickly gone around him to save those moments waiting for the flock to pass. I stopped and with the windows down on my truck I heard the quacks from the group. These were not harsh squalls often heard standing on the ground as a wing of geese fly toward the south. This was the soft sound of communication between the birds.

I wonder how it would be to be a goose, whose only industry is to sleep in the shade of a wood, eat of an open field of fescue, and walk to the other side of a road to the creek. Although I cannot see into the creek when I pass, as it is deep in an earthen gully, I imagine floating on the cool brisk flowing water, ducking my head to eat water bugs, and bringing my wet face up out again, fed. Does drama occur in a flock of geese? Are there rivalries between the males and females? I do not want to do research this to the extent I would learn the answers. I like believing in the idyllic life of geese.