Several weeks ago I was in WalMart’s huge parking lot in Claremont, NH around 7 a.m. That morning was what is becoming a typical December one in that it was damp, grey and foggy. As I trooped from my distant parking space toward the store, I heard geese overhead, but I couldn’t see them. As I continued walking, the fog thinned and the noise became louder and louder. Periodically I could see what at first I thought was the leading edge of a group of migrating geese. However, these geese weren’t migrating anywhere. They were circling and honking above the lot as more and more geese joined them.
It took me a while to figure out what this display reminded me of, but I finally did. It was very similar to the way migrating geese act during their migratory stop-overs at large feeding areas. Only in this case there was no feeding ground. Over the years the wetlands on the banks of the Sugar River, like those along rivers all over the country, somehow got reclassified as not-so-wetlands and buildings and parking lots were erected on them.
So what were these geese doing? As I pondered this, the honking mass suddenly began dispersing in all directions, with some individuals coalescing to form the familiar v-shaped formations while others flew off in more informal gangs. The only thing I could come imagine was that they’d gathered to share information. Perhaps the older geese were telling the younger ones about what a great place that used to be to stop over during migration. Or maybe they exchanged notes about alternate routes, old landmarks and feeding areas that no longer existed and new ones that would work. Maybe they discussed who no longer bothered to migrate or who didn’t go as far south any more. And perhaps they celebrated the birth of a new generation (“My, how strongly he flies!”) and the loss of old comrades.
It was an extraordinary display, but my final memory of it was a sad human one. In spite of the size of the flock, its noise, and the beauty of all those birds floating in and out of the mist, in spite of all the other people walking through that lot at that same time, only I and one other person stopped long enough to look up.
About 5 years ago, I wrote a fiction piece for a creative writing class. The first scene was the “goosy walmart”- geese squaking and nesting on what the building that was once open wetlands. Whew! All too real.
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Which leads to all kinds of interesting speculation… It would be easy to accuse retail establishments of targeting these areas and yet I suspect that a lot of folks who live around those places don’t see that land as having much value because it’s too wet for human activities. More evidence of what an arrogant as well as misguided species we are!