Hope in the Fall

"Hope In The Fall"

“HOPE IN THE FALL”

Painting 2008 Original Story March 1992

Without forewarning, a northerly gust slapped hard against the glass an announced the arrival of this threatening winter squall. It rattled the glass in the patio door, which invaded the restfulness of that night as winter began knocking on autumn’s door, and I sensed the transformation of the seasons, taking place.

The swirling wind directed the reflections of the dancing moonlight onto the freshly frosted blades of grass, which formed waves of silver glimmers that flowed along the grass stems like a ponds waves rippling on a small prairie pothole. The fallen leaves from this summer’s bountiful growing season were being lifted into the air, causing them to bob up and down across the backyard just like grandpa’s old cork decoys, trying to stay even keel, as they rode the late fall waves of the big water lakes up north.

The swinging pendulum of the kitchen clock struggled to keep up with the steady rhythm of the time that was slipping by. It was competing with the clamor coming from outside as this storm brewed. Inside the house the sound of the soft pine basement steps began to creak, as my Dad, began ascending the stairway with his final cup of coffee for the evening was about empty and was on his way upstairs to retire for the night. The jingling of dog tags on the collar of our family’s dog, as it raced past him, eager to go outside into the cold night air, added to commotion already stirring – “of the changing of seasons” of nature and our lives.

In an attempt to strike up a conversation with my Dad, I quipped, “Funny, I thought I just heard another flock of geese, isn’t it kind of late in the season for them to still be milling around here, Dad?”

He pushed open the patio door letting our dog out into the darkness, and he swallowed down his last sip of coffee before replying, “Well, we probably won’t see any of those geese around here again after tonight, until next spring.” As he flashed me a small grin.

I reluctantly retreated to my bedroom, that night before Thanksgiving. I remembered smiled to myself, thankful that I had given up my annual goose hunt to be here with him tonight in order to witness, as many times before we had done in the blind – the change of seasons and the sight and sounds of hope, that a baying flock of geese sends through a hunter’s heart and mind.

Dad, just recently diagnosed with three brain tumors a couple days before had spent the past few months battling a painful struggle to defeat the lung cancer which had taken part of his lung that summer, and would not allow us to hunt together this fall. That night was the very first time, in those few months that I had ever heard him talk positively about anything in the future. I looked forward to next Spring, myself that night to the next time, together we would marvel at those returning strings of geese breaking the southern horizons, and provide us with another reason to chat.

He was right about the geese. I did not see any geese the rest of those long lonely winter months that year. Then one Spring morning, as I stood alone in the cemetery next to his final resting-place just a few weeks after he left this world. A lone Giant Canadian Goose hollered at me through the March air. I said aloud, as though I could possibly strike up a conversation with him, “The geese are back early this year, aren’t they, Dad?”

The wind that had been howling through the Ponderosa pines that surrounded the cemetery and nearby lake fell deafly silent, I began to feel distant and alone once again, in this world. I knelt down next to the cold granite head stone as though I wanted to hug him, and rested my head, for a brief moment, on the cold granite headstone. Then suddenly over the tops of the pines, that lone Giant Canadian goose appeared, and as it flew over me, its head moving from side to side, seemed to be hopelessly searching the horizons, as it again hollered out a singular lonesome honk. That lonesome bay seemed to drift through the Spring air echoing off the moisture-filled clouds, and returned muffled and unanswered.

This giant wonder of nature turned and charted a circular course over the nearby lake, as though it was searching for some peaceful resting-place after its long journey. I pondered for a moment, whether this goose too, was on some type of journey that too, had separated him from a lost mate or one of its family members? To my own dismay, the sight of this goose produced a tear forming in my eye and tightened a lump in my throat. I recalled that last time, that I had heard the sound of geese that night last fall just before Thanksgiving Day.

My memories of last fall were quickly disrupted by the joyous ruckus of a baying flock of geese as they broke the Southern horizon and joined the pattern of that lone goose circling the lake. The volleying of honks began to get closer and closer together in cadence, as the once scattered flock of descending geese, changed their plans and began to re-group into their annual V -migration form. I watched as they ascended together, gaining altitude with their out stretched necks and heads as they re-formed their flock with this newest member and set a course towards the northern horizon.

I said a final goodbye to that lone goose, now rejoined with his flock, as he too proceeded to conclude his annual migration and begin, yet another cycle of life, for this lake today, was not his destiny. Perhaps that goose, was sent from some force of nature to remind and comfort me. A small reminder to recall those lessons of life, which my Dad had taught me, about the seasons that we hunters live in and how our lives too are marked by nature’s passage of migrating waterfowl and the lessons that only a hunting partner can teach us of our own life. That just over the horizon is another lake, should this one be dry or frozen-over, there is always another one or at the end of every season, there will be memories and stories of the hunt that we will share with our water fowling partners. Those memories that are kept alive in our stories and with the change in seasons are re-lived, in our hearts and minds forever.

As I drove the last few miles home of my own quest to see my mother that Easter, I began to wonder when or if I would ever get a chance to start my own family. So one-day too, my son and I could marvel at nature’s gift of migrating geese that mark the seasons of the year and those of the life of a hunter.

Thanks Dad.