Goose time!

By Maxim Griffin.

Mild – eerie mild – November, turning – it’s a sunny day – the thickness of the fallen leaves is measured in children – you’ve never been able to work out the colour of bare trees – keep looking – the complexity of the canopy revealed – keep looking – your ears stand up – that big sound – to call it honking seems rude – four wings – goose duet – can’t see them but they’re close – the sound pans across the top of the copse – long necks, hollow bones, fat – it shouldn’t be so exhilarating – Pharoah Sanders vs Albert Ayler – listen – until the sound passes from the grooves of the wood – keep looking.

A plain village has appeared as expected – the path from the fields goes between a pair of ’80s bungalows – someone is raking leaves – a green wheelie bin in the middle of the lawn – the raker rakes semi-circles of leaves – there are no trees in their garden – a breeze moves the leaves – the raker curses nature – you are visible enough on the path to require a greeting, but none is given – the path comes out opposite a gritstone church, a bus shelter and a small shop.

There are signs everywhere – people are afraid of pylons – people are afraid of small boats – people are afraid of pylons on small boats – since the car boot season finished, the village noticeboard is a collage of anxiety apart from one A4 corner – a sun-bleached spreadsheet of bird numbers – migrant greylags have been on the rise – slight decline in pink-footed – the keepers of these tallies are heroes, the last hedge wizards – there are starlings as you cross the road to the shop – more signs – you buy a bottle of cold orange pop.

Houses get behind you – a couple of miles of ordinary farmland – hedges that date to way back – a church on its own – the softness of unwalked paths – ditches of long grass are the moustache of the fields – over there is a swan, no doubt plotting to break your arms – there’s a red bag ragged on the metal fence – contemporary nature writing has got nothing on the Ladybird Book of What to Look for in Autumn – you should refer to it constantly – page 23 describes it best – the tractor is doing things – you lift an arm – the farmer lifts his.

Turns out you shouldn’t have been in that field, but no harm was done and the farmer was very nice – walking, legitimately, east – a line of mixed deciduous left some colour underfoot – boots in red leaves – autumn at its maximum is so tactile – you could eat it – big fungi explode slowly from the stumps – you know nothing of mycology, give or take – the book tells you no living thing would be rash enough to consume it – look closely – something has dared to have a nibble – some field rat has had a final, possibly psychedelic supper.

Majestic spectacle
The land opens up – not quite coastal – a path that goes parallel with a rank dyke – there are gulls, ever present and swirling – lifting up on warm breaths of air in the sunlight – starlings too – lots of starlings – a low pulse of murmuration below a powerline – you count nine turbines to the south – that’s when you hear them – way more than a duet – way more than a septet – heck, more than a bloody Arkestra – you lean into the sound – up ahead – mount the stile to get a fuller prospect – the territory before you is teeming, riddled, overwhelmed with geese – you curse with joy – wow – this must be their winter temple – counting is impossible – hundreds for sure, maybe thousands – seals bring the National Geographic and the tourists but the geese are where it’s really at.

A lone goose is a ridiculous thing – just a hissing über duck – even the word ‘goose’ seems funny – it leaves the mouth awkwardly and looks odd written down – four thousand geese, however, are a majestic spectacle – look – a phalanx marshals itself into flight, all battle cries and declaring – the triangle is rapidly shaped as this initial skein guns low beneath gulls that glitter – more follow – more – hundreds in the air in a matter of seconds – each one in full Beefheart voice – this is sound as an object – dense, enormous – to draw any picture of it is a fool’s errand – you look for a band leader – who’s in charge of all this? – who’s the wing commander? – who’s Sun Ra? – you try and work it out but the lead birds keep swapping – a big V nearly takes you out from the top of the stile – remember Jim in Empire of the Sun, when the Mustangs arrive – that, but geese, near Mablethorpe.

Instant orchestra
The sky has gone pale – that milky light you get when the year starts to stale – a draught of that orange pop – a faint trace of parhelion – the landscape of the outmarsh mirroring the illustration of the Ladybird book – an eruption of jackdaws, a distant tractor, dormant Saxon churches – slightly out of time – you soak it in.

Geese land, geese take flight, geese land again – you look for a rhythm to it all but it’s not obvious – there must be some strange telepathy at play – what force draws them here? – they’re just hanging around – they mill about, braying and hissing – listen – whatever communication is afoot seems to have resulted in a collective agreement – the entire flock rises as one unit – you feel their weight lifted from the earth, the weight of bone and wing oaring through the tides of a November afternoon.

Skein after skein – all points of the compass – you walk on a bit, half a mile – fields at the coast road are waterlogged, shining – the sky is full of triangles – a pair of Typhoons join it, afterburners full-tilt – a fellow could get very Stockhausen about all this – you write it down – The Instant Orchestras of Lincolnshire in autumn – you cross the road – there’s another sign, something, something no pylons – too late sunshine, we’ve already gone electric.

We Recommend

Great reasons to visit Market Rasen

Fur and feather’s feelgood factor

Private MRI Lincolnshire, no referral needed

Going for growth

Another string to her bow

All go in Grantham

View all