Wednesday, November 25, 2015

One Day in the Fall

There's one day every year.  It always happens.  In California, winter sneaks up on us, Fall happens on a day in November, leaves turn, there's a freeze perhaps.  Suddenly, it's gone, Summer is gone. 

One Autumn day, in the day or during the night there is a sound.  It's the sound of migrating geese.  These are not the local geese, the ones flying low and comfortable in this urban splendor.  These are geese flying to some distant paradise, far above the ground, unconcerned with the local parks, and other whatnot. 

I hear the sound in the dreams of my youth. It is a sound of October, November.  A decisive symptom of Autumn.  A chill rises in the air and the geese cry out in the night.  I hear this sound every year.  And I am taken back, to a place where I used to hunt geese. 

Today, I arranged to hunt geese in the place I hunted in my youth.