It is past midnight on one of those nights.  I have woken after a couple of hours of sleep and I am inexplicably awake.  I get up and read a chapter of the book beside my bed.  Suddenly the sound of geese on the wind,  flying south, wafts in from the open window, along with the soft rustle of the leaves scraping against one another in the moonlit night.

I stop and focus on their calls.  Flying in some semblance of  a V-formation, they call to one another constantly.  “Here I am.  Let’s keep moving.  Don’t stray.  You’re doing great.”  They seem to keep up an unending conversation with their brethren.

This vocal conversation never fails to stop me completely, freeze my actions and listen as they move overhead.  It is an enchanting combination of forlorn calling that fades from hearing mixed with an overheard private discussion that is not meant for me.  I find their honks and calls haunting and beautiful, one of the small joys of living along the Great Pacific Flyway.

The geese are just one of a regular group of feathered visitors that pass through or dean to stay in the upper valley for the winter.  The dying fall brings with its riot of falling leaves and rain the migrating birds, those who have been driven out of their summer feeding grounds in search of warmer climes.  The Great and the Snowy Egrets descend on the rice field stubble, many of them staying over the winter right here.  They can be seen standing singly along the roadway fallow fields, seemingly acting the sentinels for some unseen pageantry.

Herons come through.  They are the occasional grey counterpoint to the multitude of Egrets in the rice, but they are like Ohio license plates in a game of road travel bingo – bonus serendipity – not often seen and a treat that is relished.  More rarely Cranes move through, though I suspect their typical flyway runs farther East than the vast valley of California.  They are majestic visitors who stop by only long enough to allow a celebrity glimpse of their greatness before continuing on their way.

Of course there are ducks and other migratory birds abounding during the cold months of the year, some making our enticing rice fields an abbreviated rest stop, others finding reason to stay for the season.

But it is the geese that stir my soul.  I park my car at the office and step out, frozen with my briefcase in hand when their calls come to me from overhead.  Everything forgotten except their honking, I crane my neck and search the sky overhead, shading my eyes against the morning sun with my hand.  Catching sight of the uneven V of their groupings as they move through the air uplifts me as does the sound of their conversation.  Is it the notion of flying, the thought of freedom or something else primitive and elusive that quickens my heart when I hear them?  I cannot answer that question.  All I know is that there is a quiet joy sparked in me whenever I hear the call of the geese in flight.