Right now, my terrace house sits directly under a flight path, belonging not to planes but to skeins and skeins of honking Canada geese. As reliable as the first misty mornings and the slow shedding of the trees, I hear that familiar harsh call as the geese pass overhead. My view of the V shapes is often cut short by the built-up limitations of my urban view, yet they are a wonder nonetheless, their shadows occasionally forming a shifting echo on the pavement below.
Most of the Canada geese here are happily resident in the UK and no longer migrate, but come autumn, with their babies big enough to fly now, an old restlessness seems to stir in them. My neighbourhood is sandwiched between areas of marshland, and the geese have begun to move more between the best roosting and feeding sites, back and forth each day, some venturing farther afield to look for new territory, honking their movement with eager, open mouths.
I don’t know what it is, but their call has always touched my heart. It lifts my head from the laundry or the dinner, from whatever grey worry I’m lost in, sending me on a dash to the window to try to catch a glimpse. The sound speaks of a longing to me, one that I recognise because autumn brings a restlessness to me too – to do more, to be more, with wistful thoughts of those longer summer days, a quiet dread of the dark winter looming.
I look up and watch the feather-tip reach of that perfect V and remember that the geese fly that way to reduce wind resistance, the lead goose falling back once it gets tired, a new goose moving forwards to take charge. It always sends me back to my tasks a little wiser. Labour and rest. Push and ease back. No one going it alone, but joyfully interdependent on kin with only a sense of rightness, not guilt or failure. This is how the Canada geese of times past would fly, 1,500 miles in a stretch, and it is a good lesson to me on how to get through the winter too.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
