Surprised again by beauty

Feb. 19, 2004

Dear Julie,

DC and the dogs awoke me just after daybreak Saturday, just as she warned they would. She still wouldn't tell me why. "It's a surprise," she said.

What surprise goes well with dawn on a frosty Saturday morning? Nothing good came to mind, especially not then at dawn.

At least the dogs were excited. When DC starts putting clothes on they know it probably means a walk is in store. Alvie starts baying, and Hank and Lucy begin barking at his baying. They won't stop until their leashes are on and they're out the door. It's quite an incentive to dress quickly.

But this was more than a walk. This was a ride, east through the gleaming cables that fasten our new bridge over the Mississippi, then north. DC follows the same route twice a week to teach at Southern Illinois University.

What's the surprise? I asked.

You'll see, she said.

Rumi:

"There is a thread from the heart to the lips

where the secret of life is woven.

Words tear the thread

but in silence the secrets speak."

"There," DC finally said, 10 miles up the highway. She was looking at the sky. Heading straight for us was an enormous V of Canadian geese. Had they been a squadron of planes in World War II, they might have scared the Japanese fleet all the way back to Tokyo without dropping a bomb.

Wow, I said.

DC said I hadn't seen anything yet.

More V's appeared every few minutes. We turned into a wildlife refuge and stopped the car next to a large pond brimming with ducks and geese. With the sunroof open, the quacks and honks outside sounded symphonic. We sat and listened not wanting to disturb anything or anyone.

We saw movement in the line of trees far behind the pond. First the outline of one deer, then another became visible in the trees. Altogether we made out nine slowly walking east to west. You wonder if the deer and the geese can sense safety.

It was a perfect world until a small white dog we had not seen began approaching the car from the vicinity of the pond. Hank, Lucy and Alvie sent up howls and threats that made the little white dog run and caused the ducks and geese to swim for the far side of the pond.

Now we felt like intruders.

Along the road out of the refuge was a field blanketed with snow geese. Above us, a profusion of V's began appearing, some only a few hundred feet over our heads. The V's kept coming. I pulled over and we watched ribbon after ribbon of geese, some going north, some south, stretch across the sky. It was like watching all the spaceships overhead atop the mountain in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

Now I saw what DC wanted me to see.

The natural world sends us all kinds of messages. They are different from the messages on TV and on billboards. These messages glide through the air, are communicated wordlessly. The message is: The world is incomprehensibly beautiful. Open your eyes.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is the managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.