If I go outdoors at night, I can hear the low-throated cooing of owls, what I now recognize as their mating calls. For years I didn’t recognize what I heard on these winter nights as the love songs of owls. The gently mysterious and lonesome call might be the only sound that pierces the quiet of a winter's night.
My sense of it is deepened by knowing that it precedes their mating, nesting and preparing to hatch a brood of helpless little owlets whose survival is totally dependent on the parent bird's soft downy warmth and fierce hunting to provide for them — while the snow flies and temperatures will drop to where a little owlet fallen from its nest would freeze to death in a matter of seconds.
I've seen only one big migratory flock of geese this year. They stopped and fed in the field below the house. It seems that what I watched was several smaller flocks of maybe 12 upwards to 40 birds, each landing at different times in the field. In turn the bands in the air would talk to the ones on the ground, land a respectable distance from them, and feed. They'd continue to talk in softer voices and fly maybe 50 yards or so to join the other band.
The gathering of these small family bands of geese lasted for several hours as more flew in and joined them. I could see the geese migrate slowly, step-by-step, from one end of the field to the other. A few sentry geese would have their heads up, watching and listening while the others ate under the safety of their watch. Their voices softened to a mild gabble.
Then, the following day, about mid-morning, after a good night's sleep and breakfast, the noise from the gathered large flock rose to a crescendo and the flight leaders and their lieutenants took off in a singular flurry of wings and wild noise that filled the sky outside my window until it faded and was gone.
Today the field is empty and quiet. There should be snow on the field by now but there isn't; the birds that should be arriving and leaving in a regular frenzy are still waiting to be pushed south by storms, in turn, that haven't arrived.
I'm a little worried about our rainfall and snowpack heading into 2025, but not much. The owls and geese will figure it out, adapt and endure as they always have.
If we're wise in the ways they are, we must do the same. We won't spend too much energy wringing our hands over things we can't control. We'll instead quietly put our energies, our capacity for warmth, strength and simple resolve into our mates and offspring, as the owls do, and band together from small family flocks into bigger ones with common purposes like the geese do. As Teddy Roosevelt said, we must do what we can, with what we have, now.
We have just finished a holiday, but hopefully not a season, that brings us the hope for love to prevail — as the old Christmas carol proclaims — with peace on earth, goodwill toward men. We feel those things deep within, as realities or yearnings, but we feel them nonetheless and know them, and want to experience more of them.
I am reminded at this time every year of a favorite quote from Dag Hammarskjold, a great man whom history has all but forgotten. Back when the U.N. amounted to something, over 50 years ago, he served as Secretary General.
Late in his life, Hammarskjold mused, “If only I may grow: firmer, simpler, quieter, warmer.”
Those words were emblazoned over a sunset on a poster that hung behind the desk of a man I greatly admired. He was inclined to live by them. To grow, in Hammarskjold’s sense, is to be inclined, over time, to press on toward the goal, not regarding a faltering step as failure, or letting a setback become defeat.
I have to ask myself: As I leave 2024 behind, how might I grow firmer, simpler, quieter, warmer, through 2025 and beyond?
Might I grow firmer, simpler, quieter, warmer, in those reflective moments when the sun sets the sky ablaze and swallows dart for mayflies that descend toward rising trout where my fly floats among them? Might I find, in those surroundings, quiet moments of humility where firmness and simple warmth might grow? And how might that strengthen me, make me firmer, more able to love my family and be warmer among my friends?
I plan to go fishing more often this year to find out.
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