Distant hoolie a reminder of home
EVEN more rare than a day of fair weather and clear sky in June is one in November. Despite the sweet, soft air and the golden light, however, I struggled to get myself out the door to my favourite walk.
By the time I had my camera slung over my shoulder and my boots snugged around my ankles, the sun was nearly as high as it reaches in this lazy-sun season.
I climbed the little hill by my house less briskly than I sometimes do, enjoying taking in the light and noticing the patches of frost-covered foliage on the verge.
I thought I was heading up the hill to see the swans, but the short walk in my patch, as Bill Oddie dubs our neighbourhoods, is full of surprises. It is hard to say which season offers the most beautiful light, but certainly this golden lustre is to be cherished. A friend recently commented that as little as 200 miles south the light is altogether different.
I mused I would like to know a bit more about the physics of it – trying to visualize the angle of the Earth and the sun, and the changes in latitude.
She dismissed this as if it would somehow diminish the magic of it, but I think physics and magic make good companions. Such thoughts rattling around in my head as I walk are a good antidote for the sense of loss and homesickness that has dogged my steps lately.
Sometimes, I confess, I think up haiku – poems based on 17 syllables originally from Japan – as I walk. Sometimes I think of nothing at all.
IN that thinking-of-nothing-at-all strolling pace, I noticed distant lowing of cattle. The cattle in the field next to me were quiet, but they were looking away from me and the road with a definite curiosity.
Above the sound of the cattle were the sounds of a veritable hoolie of geese. These characters were much too loud and too wild for such a tame word as gaggle. I reached the top of the hill and descended, expecting the sound to increase as I got closer to the loch, but instead it was muffled. The logical part of me thought I would just say hello to my swans and head back on my usual path, but a recollection of watching sandhill cranes on their migration at a nature reserve in Indiana was compelling.
It had been a stunning sight; rhythmic, rising and falling as new birds arrived or departed, each movement requiring a readjustment of the group as a whole, accompanied with thunderous calling.
I had driven miles out of my way in Indiana to see the sandhill cranes. A climb over the fence and walk toward the loch seemed a small effort to make in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the geese behind all that noise. I walked over the rough, wet ground to the edge of the loch. My swans were on the far side of the loch, seemingly unaffected by the rowdy geese tucked out of my sight on the loch.
Having come to the edge of the loch, I stood and listened for a while and then accepted the fact I would not be granted an invitation to their party and headed back home.