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March 2009: The Geese Return |
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One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is spring.
A cardinal, whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself
mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence. A
chipmunk, emerging for a sunbath but finding a blizzard, has only to go
back to bed. But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black
night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance
for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has
burned his bridges.
A March morning is only as drab as he who walks in it without a glance
skyward, ear cocked for geese. I once knew an educated lady, banded by
Phi Beta Kappa, who told me that she had never heard or seen the geese
that twice a year proclaim the revolving seasons to her well-insulated
roof. Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things
of lesser worth? The goose who trades his is soon a pile of feathers.
The geese that proclaim the seasons to our farm are aware of many
things, including the Wisconsin statutes. The southbound November
flocks pass over us high and haughty, with scarcely a honk of
recognition for their favorite sandbars and sloughs. 'As a crow flies'
is crooked compared with their undeviating aim at the nearest big lake
twenty miles to the south, where they loaf by day on broad waters and
filch corn by night from freshly cut stubbles. November geese are aware
that every marsh and pond bristles from dawn till dark with hopeful
guns.
These excerpts are from A Sand County Almanac, with essays on conservation from Round River, by Aldo Leopold and published by Oxford University Press (1966).
For more information about Aldo Leopold, see: www.aldoleopold.org
An inexpensive paperback version of Sand County Almanac published by
Ballantine Books is widely available at book stores or on-line.
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