Geese
“If you pass the ball along the line and all of you catch it while you are running then I promise you that you can go and chase the geese.’
It was in the early 1990s at Burnaby Lake fields in the City of Burnaby, just east of Vancouver. This group of 6 year olds was being introduced to the game of rugby. The coach was a willing and enthusiastic father. Everybody liked the wide open spaces of Burnaby Lake fields but nobody liked them more than the resident Canada Geese. Personally, Dear Reader, I have always liked geese of whatever type and persuasion. I love their long neck, their incessant honking, their ability to look both naïve and wise. I have also heard that they make excellent guards, better than dogs so some would say. It would be fair to say that I also respect geese which is not the same with many animals. It is easy to love a dog or a cat, wonderful to stroke an horse at the edge of a field. I can be in awe of an elephant or a whale, their might and size and intelligence. I admire the ability of salmon to navigate their ways back to the river of their birth over thousands of miles. The fact that the tern makes the long flight from Pole to Pole every year is amazing. I am honoured to be told that I resemble an Highland Cow! But all of these are attributes over which they have no control. There is something within me which suggests a goose has control. And therefore I give it respect.
As a young father I gave little thought to the poor birds being chased by an herd of 6 year olds. I knew the geese would never be caught and had enough belief in them that I was confident they would be able to look after themselves. The flock could fly, the herd could not. No, Friends, I was more interested in whether my son would take to the game which I had loved for most of my life. I did not know it at the time but, like all parents, I was preparing for a vicarious existence, a lifetime on the sidelines cheering on the successes and failures of others. I like to think that I was that parent who rejoiced at the failures as much as the successes, but I probably wasn’t. But, like many teachers I did see the endless possibilities in failure and the occasional pitfall in success. Geese? Well, they didn’t care either way.
I remember my good friend, Geoffrey, a native of the appropriately named Haltwhistle in the Northumbrian borderlands between Scotland and England. I met him as a mature student at my teacher’s training college and took to him immediately; a man with a self-deprecating sense of humour; a person who loved his sport; but most of all possessed of an homespun wisdom and a lover of geography and the world. Geoffrey followed knowledge like a sinking star up to the last moments of his life a couple of years ago, the world is a poorer place for his departure. He had come to college at the age of 26 having worked for his father’s grocery business as a delivery van driver to the many farming communities in the area. He related the sad tale of pulling into a familiar farmyard one day and, on dismounting, realised that he had run over the farmer’s prize goose. After many an apology and eating of humble pie, he remounted the van and drove hastily out of the farmyard killing another goose on the way out. It seems that geese like human beings are victims of Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest. I don’t think Geoffrey ever went back.
Like some things-Davidson there is a point to this and it will become evident to you soon. My wife, Irene, loves our garden. Spring arrives and she is out there preparing it for growth. Beetroots, tomatoes, raspberries, runner beans with a border of magnolias to distract the insects and keep them away from the produce, all products of Irene’s ability, set her loose in a desert for 6 months and verdant greenery shall break out. Her plants are all her children during the shortness of these seasons. Summer makes its appearance and she is out there watering most evenings, edging the borders, prising up the weeds, demanding of her husband’s indolence when the grass needs cutting. She fights the bamboo battle incessantly, trimming the untrimmable until it is a shadow of its former self before it bounces back to its former glory at a warp speed not achieved by any other plant. We cannot depart or arrive back at the house without a critical eye being cast over the front hedge and short term plans to clip a part of it here and plan for next month’s major haircut there. Irene loves Spring and Summer.
Sitting upstairs on my computer as Fall knocks tentatively at the door, I have occasionally heard uncharacteristic screams and shouts from the back garden. I have dashed downstairs to find out what has caused such a ruckus. There is my wife, eyes peering upward and shouting and waving her arms.
“No, no, no go back”.
Her plaintive yells go unheeded. Above her is a skein of geese, perfect V formation, honking and charting its way south the instincts of a change of season having kicked in. And that, Dear Reader, is the moment when my dear wife dips her head in sorrow and realises that the halcyon days of blue sky and hot sun and burgeoning growth and verdant life are coming to an end because Fall is around the corner. I help her to place her tools in the shed for next year, remove the outdoor furniture, take down the hammock, hide the parasol behind the shed. After a few days we talk about buying the Thanksgiving turkey ( Never a Thanksgiving goose I hasten to add) and, on doing so, discover that the boxes of Halloween candy are already in the shops. We buy them, knowing that we are going to have to buy more because we are way too early. At this point, Dear Friends, we have nearly adjusted to the shorter days, the longer nights, the welcome precipitation, the absence of forest fire news. But never not ever, Dear Reader, does my wonderful wife fully recover from the trauma of watching her geese flying south for the winter. She will be out there scouring the skies for their return next March.
I hope, Dear Friends, if you are Canadian, that you all had a wonderful turkey-filled, goose-free Thanksgiving.
