As a kid, I remember looking up in amazement in the spring and fall to see giant Vs of geese heading north or south depending on the season. I always wondered how they knew to do that.
That may be one of the reasons my plan was to go to Colorado State, get a degree in wildlife management and then work for the US Forest Service. But in 1966 when I graduated high school my Uncle Sam had other ideas.
The Navy Recruiter convinced me, who had never seen water I could not see the other side of, that I should be a sailor. So, I became one.
But I digress.
Geese flying south meant that before long it was going to cool off, if they were going north things would start to green up soon. I didn’t need a weather forecaster to tell me that, the geese made a much more accurate prediction.
It’s turning to spring now and as I walk early mornings on Blackmer Municipal Golf Course out back, I often find Canada geese on the lake. I usually hear them before I see them, and if I’m not too close to the water, and stay still, I enjoy hearing and watching them arrive on the lake.
When they decide to drop in for a visit, it’s much like a private pilot coming in for a landing, they circle the lake a time or two before dropping gracefully onto the water. If they see me or any other perceived threat they wisely will keep on flying.
There’s just something exotic about the name Canada goose. They nest in the Arctic regions of Northern Canada and in their Vs they are on their way there from their winter holiday in warmer climes in the south. I’m not a kid anyone and yet I’m still asking how do they know to do that? Who told them, who trained them?
Over the weekend we found ourselves in Wichita. There was a need to go to the mall, Town East to be specific.
As I dropped Grandma at a mall entrance I noticed a Canada goose standing nearby, not a bit scared, like a statue almost there on the concrete sidewalk.
When a bit later I pulled up to the entrance again to pick up Grandma, the goose was still there.
Our daughter pointed out there actually were two of them, the other was sitting on a nest on bare ground, over next to a bush in full view of a busy world.
My first thought was “how cute,” and I took a picture with my trusty phone.
As I drove the 200+ miles home a few hours later my thought changed to “how sad!”
Those two geese had traded the beauty and provisions of wilds of marshes of northern Canada for the dirt, the handouts and concrete of the mall in Wichita. They had obviously not heard, probably lost actually, the call of the wild. They had forfeited their exotic and natural birthright for the drab concrete and dirt of a man-built mall.
It occurred to me that this is really a picture of our nation. We, much like those two geese have given up the beauty, the color, the provision, the majesty of our God called heritage for the drabness of a human ordained life of standing on concrete sidewalk begging for handouts.
I still hear faintly the call of the wild, maybe there’s hope.