Illustration by Carl Friedrich Deiker (1875) Wikipedia

ALAN writes:

Last Sunday I spent six hours at my local park. It was an ideal day: Clear blue sky, warm sunshine, occasional breezes, and the green in the park that seems to increase by the day. People who are hip, cool, and trendy would probably find such an afternoon hopelessly boring. At least I hope they would if it keeps them away from me.

 Throughout the afternoon I walked around a lake several times, pausing now and then to sit on benches at opposite ends of the lake. I sat on “The Duck Lady”‘s bench, placed there in remembrance of a woman who lived near the park and found homes with people who wanted to adopt them for ducks who had not learned how to forage for themselves. I meditated, absorbed the ambient beauty, listened to birdsong, and constructed conversations in imagination with long-dead friends.

On a day in March when I walked through that park, a group of “newborn daffodils were showing off their skills…,” as Nat Cole sang in the 1963 ballad “That Sunday, That Summer”.  And now they are gone.

I visited the famous S.Q. Urrels family. Twelve of them stopped by to say hello (not all at once, because they are rugged individualists). I gave each of them a peanut butter cracker.  They were delighted.  Seldom have I seen such dignity, such gratitude, and such haste in making a safe getaway with the goods clamped firmly in their teeth.

In mid-afternoon I caught sight of what I thought was a red-winged blackbird as he alighted on a high branch of a tree not more than thirty yards from the bench where I sat. As if he apprehended what I was thinking at that instant, he turned ninety degrees to offer a side view and permit me to see the bright red spots on his wings. Less than a moment after that, he flew to a tree closer to my bench and perched on a branch directly above me, as if to offer me a close-up view, for which I thanked him.

I returned to that bench twice later in the afternoon, and each time he returned to the high branch where I had first seen him several hours earlier.

Four ducks and four geese came to visit and express their good wishes. The feeling was mutual.  They are hardy creatures.  They got through a blizzard last winter and several nights of temperatures at or below zero.  They also manage to survive the antics of unrestrained children, bikers who show how much noise they can create, bicyclists who compete to see how fast they can go along driveways in the park, and the threat of attack by countless dogs.

When her companions wandered off down the hillside, Snow Goose, whom I believe is actually an Embden goose, walked back to me to continue our visit. When they visit me, I am quiet as a church mouse and they appreciate it.  She lingered there for several moments, grazing near the ledge where I sat, closer to me than your computer screen is to you as you read these words, practically sitting in my lap, showing that she trusts me. Such moments can be enormously gratifying.  Gene Stratton-Porter wrote, “The greatest thing possible to do with a bird is to win its confidence.”  [Gene Stratton-Porter, What I Have Done With Birds, Bobbs-Merrill, 1907, p. 1]

I agree. Snow Goose and her three companions allowed me to do that.  Their home is a lake in a city park, and when I visit them there, I am a guest in their home, so I abide by their preferences. I never approach them; I wait for them to approach me, if they wish.  If not, I admire them from a distance. They never advise me to “have a nice day” or “have a good one”, for which I am eternally thankful to them. In any case, that would be redundant: Whenever I see them there, they have already made the day a good one.

In late winter I went to the park one afternoon after not having been there for several weeks because of consistently cold weather. I walked along the grass near the lake, and the senior gander was the first one to spot me.  He announced to all present that I had come back to visit them with goodies to eat. His three companions and a dozen or more ducks then surrounded me in a flurry of excitement and expectation.  Even a few Canada geese walked up from the lake to see what was going on.

At evening twilight, just as I was about to leave the park, Snow Goose came up the hillside from the lake to visit me again at a different bench and to request a few crackers out of my hand.

Hours spent with such unassuming creatures have the wonderful benefit of reinforcing my confidence — not in the human race (in whom I have absolutely no confidence), but in those creatures and the wonder and beauty of much of life.

In 1939 Vita Sackville-West wrote:  “It gives a peculiar sense of intimacy with nature to realize that your presence is accepted without fear by the small and vulnerable creatures of bank and wood and to watch them going unalarmed about their normal business.”  [V. Sackville-West, Country Notes, Michael Joseph Ltd., London, 1939, p. 141]  That is my experience and sentiment, also.

It is a pleasure to visit creatures who, unlike homo saps, do not send out junk mail, conduct opinion surveys, or interrupt our visits to check their e-mail; creatures who are not drunk on their own arrogance or the tyranny of The Now; creatures who are part of the eternal verities and who are attuned to the joy of life, not the endless ephemeral stupidities invented by homo saps.

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