Look up and see the wild world

There is something profound about witnessing hundreds of birds flying together in migration, each carrying on their wings the intention of coming home. Such a site fills my heart deep down with an odd combination of joy, longing and sadness. It makes me forget about any trivial to-dos or lingering regrets. A flock like that brings me right into the present.

At dusk tonight I pulled into my driveway, freshly defeated after a soccer loss and for various reasons, missing my dad. He’s been gone now for almost a year. I was wishing I could just have a conversation with him, like we typically did on weekends. I stopped daydreaming and stepped out of my truck, startled by the sounds of geese above my head. I looked up to see droves and droves of Canadians, on the final approach of another spring migration. They were making a bee-line for their summer stop at Creamer’s Field.

The graceful flapping of their wings coupled with their gawky voices made me stop for several minutes in awe. And they were so animated in their calls that I wondered what it was they were saying to each other. Or maybe they were simply calling out in pure unabashed glee, the way that any being would who’d just completed a nearly three thousand mile journey with just their body as the vehicle.

Dad once wrote in a bird book that he gave me for my birthday, “There is so much good in the wild world, I hope that you find it all.” I think of those words tonight and am reminded why it is such a gift to live in Alaska. The wild world’s goodness is easy to find. Sometimes it’s as simple as just standing in one place and looking up.