A Wild Thing

Actually my most beautiful moment had to do with a Canada goose, who had a mind of her own and enormous trust. It was after suffering the ultimate down time in my life, I had opened a restaurant, taken a total bath and my then wife had left me, taking our infant daughter. The sense of desolation was complete. It is also a terrible experience to wake up one morning in middle age and find yourself staring at a single, dingy lamp shade in a furnished room after having held important positions in the networks and major political campaigns. Months later, while attending an Episcopal seminary, I met another, quietly extraordinary woman, and we two, of totally different backgrounds, forged a relationship into a happy, and now protracted, marriage. It was early into this marriage that the Canada hen briefly came into my life.

Our society has deemed that past age thirty-five you are on the way out, and I was appreciably beyond that. When I was a boy I remember they sold an after-35-years-of-age nostrum called "Serutan,” "That's natures spelled backwards," for those in decline. Now there are octogenarians in the hundreds of thousands. I was having a tough time selling screenplays and trying to find work when I decided to build a 14x12 foot floating dock. I was handy, had some tools, and the work was hugely satisfying in that Northport, Long Island’s spring. It was duly launched, with champagne, and lots of muscle, and became my dock, although our sadistic landlord owned it.

I took to feeding the Canada geese and a pair of swans that lived in the bay. Got so, many of the geese would eat out of my hand. I wonder why that is so important, a wild animal eating from your hand. Perhaps it is the crossing of some threshold, the communication and acceptance despite the animal's experience with humankind. People put their lives on the line every year trying to feed bears and other big game. They are dying to be accepted by a wild critter. Anyway, the geese would eat from my hand as I dangled my legs over the side of the dock with my feet in the water. It was a nice thing and had nothing of the confusions and exasperations of everyday American life.

It got so that the geese would jump up on the dock, settle down, and absorb the warmth the wood had taken from the sun. It was just wonderful to see these trusting wild things about me, permitting me to be a part of their world for long moments. Knowing sudden motion would startle them, I would remain as still as possible to lengthen the experience. I noticed the hen because she stared at me with cocked head for several minutes, as if judging this big presence. Then, after making up her goose's mind, she stood up, walked toward me, and gently jumped into my lap. She stared for another moment, then tucked her head beneath a wing and went to sleep. I was transfixed and slowly, very slowly, brought my hand around and placed it on the beautiful feathers of her back.

We sat there like a tableaux, or a scene from St. Francis of Assisi’s' life. The big, graying, human male and the warm, beautiful Canada goose. I wanted urgently to call to my wife but muted my cries for fear of disturbing the beautiful sleeping bird. After about fifteen minutes in that position my feet lost sensation and the circulation slowed, then cramping set in, but I wouldn't move. After all the vicissitudes, all the disappointments, dashed hopes, frustrations and even despair, something from a far different world totally trusted me and there were no conditions, no deals.

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For long moments I was transported to a world of total trust. No scheming, maneuvering for position, jockeying for power or a terrific story which would place me on camera for forty seconds or less. Get enough of those forty second “on camera” pieces, and sure enough you’ve got Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of attention, of notoriety. This was so different, so gentle, and so totally unexpected.

First one, then another of the geese started to move, to come back into the daylight world after their siesta. My hen sensed the movements perhaps, brought her head around, stretched, shook out her wings and climbed down from my lap and then jumped into the water. She wagged her tail vigorously, turned in my direction once, looked at me, I think, then, with her gaggle, swam off into Northport Bay.

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