Monday, September 7, 2009

A New Location...


We are now in Susanville, CA.  It is a beautiful place.  I am listening to Canadian Geese fly overhead as I type this.  Our RV park is very quiet and well kept.  Each of us have our own little grass lawn, patio and outside lamp.

I am looking forward to getting back to painting and hope to finish the lily before the end of the week.  Here are some photos of the park (my husband is on the bike!) and sunrise with my flying friends.  Since I grew up in southwest Iowa (a major flyway for the Canadian Geese) I love the sound of their conversations in flight.  It brings back memories of growing up and early memories of my first marriage.  My husband was an avid hunter and as a new wife I was taken along to hunt geese.  The early morning and late afternoons were the times to hunt, although the geese were so thick at times that you could simply stand in your yard and shoot into the air and have dinner.  I am not a hunter since I find more beauty and fulfillment in looking at animals and waterfowl than in eating them.  One day after my husband bagged his goose and we were walking back toward the farmhouse, we were followed by a low flying goose whose call was very different from the calls of the flock in flight.  The goose circled low overhead all the way to the house.  When I commented on it, my husband told me that Canadian Geese mate for life and that he must have just killed this one's mate.  I have not cooked or eaten a goose since that day.  This memory is bittersweet.  Over the years I think about that lone goose and regret my part in that day.

4 comments:

  1. I have heard of this kind of thing before - how tragic to experience it - I could hardly bear to read it it was so sad - hopefully geese have fairly short memories (but then they do remember to move countries for winter don't they). I would be like you - no able to bear to eat it in future.

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  2. Very touching story, the one with the goose probably mourning the loss of his mate!

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  3. Weaver, It is my understanding that Canadian Geese only mate once and it's for life. When the mate dies, the survivor spends the remainder of its life alone. It was enough to make me choose never to be a part of another's death. They are such beautiful creatures, it is enough to watch them.

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  4. Oh, that is a difficult memory to tell and to hear. The pain we inflict on other creatures is just too much to fathom.

    Now you "capture" them with beautiful photographs. Thank you.

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