Shelley and I drove north the morning of the day before the shortest day. We rolled through Kent County, commenting on its agreeable flatness, and the winter crops turning the brown fields green. We watched the sunrise orange through the trees, flickering by as it developed its full size. It rose through a gap at the horizon and colored the rest of the heavily clouded sky with a pearl gray.
Shelley first noticed the dark lines low on the horizon. As we approached, it became clear it was thousands and thousands of geese in plumps of a couple hundred. As we got nearer, they appeared to be more overhead, and we could easily see the white bodies and black wing tips of snow geese in their asymmetric vees – none on the ground, all in the air.
The line of geese stretched for miles to the right and left, flickering randomly as the wings rose and fell. An occasional single goose or three or four of them were flying against the flow in search of friends or cousins.
We had to stop for a moment for road construction, and when we rolled the window down, we heard them honking in their hundreds, directly overhead, white against the low gray sky.
Then we and the geese went our way.
By Ed Minch
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