Yesterday afternoon a friend and I sat on the grassy bank of a lake at Desert Shores. The water was a dark blue green and a little choppy. The chilly wind was blowing my hair and the sun was warm.
"This is a peaceful place," my friend said and I agreed.
"Did you notice how beautiful the sky and clouds are?" He pointed across the lake. I had noticed.
Emerald green headed Mallards and their brown ladies bobbed by as if in watery rocking chairs. Sleek little black coots upended themselves looking for food. Suddenly the mallards lifted themselves from the water and flew east around the lake and to the other side.
"I wonder how they all know it's time to fly like that." I said. "I mean, who gives the signal?"
My friend remembered V shaped flights of Canadian geese from when he was a child. "Funny," he said, "how we never really paid a lot of attention to those things when we were young and now, we notice the sky, the clouds, mountains, ducks, coots, the color of the water, the feel of the grass and they all seem more vivid than ever."
It's true. It's as if at some point nature fits us with our "old" glasses and what we see begins to take on new meaning. We see the pine cone or the feather on the ground beside us and it is important, as if we are storing it in our mind for later. The sun is a sudden golden memory warming our hearts. We miss the wrinkles on the face of an old friend and see him as he was when we cruised Fremont Street as teens… smooth and sweet. The hand that points to the returning ducks is once more young.
"Here they come."
The ducks soared past us and settled into the water again at a signal we couldn't discern. They took their positions, preening and bobbing. One flapped his wings and quacked loudly. The coots were undisturbed, still looking for food.
My friend and I sat on the grassy bank and watched, wearing our "old" glasses.
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