As the sun set in a cloudless western sky, I sat on my back patio late this afternoon, smoked a cigar and watched a flock of ducks circle over the small pond that borders our neighborhood and a small pocket park that is but a short hike down the hill from Gunnels Manse.
The ducks, for reasons known only to them, winter each year in
the pond, and early each evening they take wing before settling down for the
night.
I counted 14 today. There may be more, but I’ve never
bothered to take an exact count. The number isn’t really important. It’s their circuits
around Pickering Park that bring each day in Trail Lake Estates to a calm and peaceful
close. I have come to consider them part of the family.
Sometimes they travel in pairs, sometimes in groups of four or
six. Then the entire flock will flap in large, swooping circuits that take them
briefly out of sight. But they always reappear, as regular as the ticks on a
clock.
I watch them and feel
the stresses of the day slowly, steadily dissolve.
It has been an especially good holiday for the Gunnels family.
My kids surprised me yesterday and made brief appearances. I hadn’t expected to
see them on Christmas Day, but they made a special effort to come by, probably
at the gentle urging of my wife, who knows what a sentimental mush I am at heart.
I don’t know what the future holds for all of us. These are,
after all, dangerous and uncertain times. But as I sat today and watched our
ducks make their graceful evening transits overhead, I was filled with an optimism
that everything is going to turn out all right.
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