Transformations

Transformations

           The sky is white in late winter/early sprig mist. It is like the heavens have no height, but exist just as a hovering presence, like smoke from fireplaces in a deep, cold northern valley in the winter. I am out in the backyard knocking the snow off of the drooping branches of a spruce tree I am particularly fond of. I like to see the branches standing high and proud, not weighed down with snow, like it has suffered some loss.

           I am deep in thought with questions for which I have no decent answer.  Recently I have become aware of the fact that I cannot remember anything beyond three years ago. I have no clear memories of having any family, although I seem vaguely to feel I used to be part of a noisy group of young ones running around beside a pond. And I often find that people know who I am, but I have no recall of ever having met with them before. This includes the people I work with in the grocery store nearby. I nod my head when they talk of experiences past, laugh when it is appropriate. I hold the thoughts tight in my head so that I will be sure to mention them the next time I see the person who told me of the memory. I need to fit in, not to seem strange to those I meet. I am not sure why that is

           I am taken from these worrying thoughts when I suddenly hear a cry coming from the formless white of the sky. It is the call of a goose, a ‘where are you, I am here’ call of location. For some  reason without conscious thought, I whistle back in as close to the original sound that I can achieve with my human lips and throat.

           I hear the calling sound again, again coming from high overhead. I whistle back, first quiet, like I have a human audience judging the quality of my call, then a little louder, as I am speaking to a goose, and they trumpet their calls to the sky.   I hope to be telling the goose ‘You are not alone. Someone hears you and understands what you are saying.’ I think like that. Having spent time on my own, with neither friend nor family in sight or sound, I do understand the need for such a message, sent and received, even with strangers.

            Quiet follows, and I return to my work of knocking the snow off of the spruce branches. But I being to worry about the silence of the sky.  I feel a need to repeat my call to my fellow being now unheard as well as unseen in the sky. I stop what I am doing and give a call I hope means, “I am here. Where are you? You are not alone.” At least that is what I think that it means. I must have heard geese a lot in the past that I have forgotten.

           Then I hear what I am sure is an attempt to reply, as it is louder, closer to me than what I heard before. I turn in the direction the sound is coming from. Then appearing as if by some act of wilderness magic is a goose, wings widespread, webbed feet reaching for the ground before me, landing more softly than I would have imagined that they would. Then all motion stops, as I am stared at in what I believe to be avian wonder. We are about five human paces apart, a safe-feeling distance for two beings standing in sight of no other, and not sure what to do.

           Both of us consider what will be out next move, neither of us apparently wanting to scare the other away with sudden motion. I question the wisdom of making any such move at all. Slow is calming. Fast is startling

           It is strange, but when I look at this bird I know that she is female. There’s no one particular physical feature that tells me that. I just know somehow the gender of my new acquaintance.

           Aware of our height difference, I crouch down, while she stands as tall as she can, so that both of us can familiarize ourselves with the face of the other.

           Then the goose makes another, different sound. I swear that I know that it asks a question. I reply with a sound of my own, as if the addressing the bird’s question, but really doing little more than repeating what she has just said, with a different tone finishing my call. I wish that I had something the she could eat, frozen corn kernels perhaps, or dried and cracked corn, something good tasting like that. But I have nothing like that to offer her.

           Is she smiling at me? Her mouth is open slightly. Maybe she is breathing heavily after her flight. We repeat the sounds, the messages to each other, something we are both happy to do. With each repeat of the back and forth sequence, I sound more like my new companion.

           A different, thicker sort of mist now encircles me in a slow swirling motion like that of water flowing down into a deep hole. I feel strange, light-headed, light-bodied even. I take a few steps forward and soon I am looking at the female goose face-to-face, both of us the same height, although I am no longer crouching. I look down and see that my steps have been taken with yellow webbed feet. I am no longer human.

           She calls to me with a sound I know to mean “It is time.” I hear a flapping from above. A somewhat larger bird, a male, lands to my left, her right. A small grounded cloud spins around him, he disappears, and then reappears, having become human. He picks up the clothes I somehow sloughed off without knowing it, dresses himself and becomes the human I was. I understand now what this was about. I was to become a human for a while to gather information, which I would share with the flock. But I could only stay human for three years. Now it is his turn. 

           I recognize my female companion. She is my mate. I will no longer be alone and without memories. We fly off together through the mist into such heights that we join a flock that was silent for this time of transition, but now returns to the comfortable calling that is the usual speech of our kind in flight.