Migration
Cold clouds scuttled across the slate gray autumn sky. Their shadows mottled the brown fields and ruffled lake in the valley below, and then fled across the muted russet and orange of the hills; chasing the sun west. A smell of snow was in the air.
The geese came over the hills from the north, sweeping across the sky in great phalanxes of noise; the thrumming of a thousand wings, backed by the haunting sound of a thousand throats crying, "On! On! On!"
I stood amongst the rocks and red leaves of a hilltop blueberry field that glowed in the setting sun. I watched until the last lone V disappeared beyond the southern hills. And for a time my heart went with them.
Somewhere from the distant lake, a loon cried a mournful farewell.
A few years later, I followed the geese south. Like them, I was bound for better feeding grounds. Unlike them, I never returned.
I visited, of course, but a visit is not a migration. A visit home is a yo-yo in free spin. The brief feel of freedom and comfort as you whirl back through the years and landmarks, and then life yanks you back to the present.
I have moved for jobs, I have moved for love, and I have moved for safety. But each move leaves memories of time and towns--an accretion of places abandoned--that can be neither recovered nor forgotten. And the pull to return home grows with each migration, even as the memories grow less distinct.
Only that hilltop field stands firm in my memory.
Only the cry of the loon, asking where I've gone.
