Mystery of Nature

Gone. They were gone. When I walked by the nest tonight, it was empty.

Just two days before, the female goose sat warming the eggs while the male guarded close by. But today, nothing. No one was on the nest, no eggs visible, no goose standing guard.

I walked a bit further, then headed back, still looking. I saw them finally—the way they used to be before the dawn of spring--the gray pair grazing together on the grass along the riverbank, nonchalantly nibbling the clover.

If it weren’t for the tufted feathers under the female’s body, I wouldn’t have known eggs had been laid and softly hidden within a nest of downy undercoat.

Perhaps the pair was just taking a break, as they sometimes had before. There was sunlight filtering over the nest, after all.

Maybe the eggs were tucked away, and were warm enough. It just seemed odd to me that the pair was so far down river, so far from their brood-to-be or, the other alternative, no little ones in tow.

Maybe something had happened in the past two days since I had been there last. Had the goslings hatched? Had prey seized an unwatched moment of opportunity?

I can’t help but feel a bit melancholy at the possibilities. While other nests are bearing new life or being closely watched, theirs is unsettlingly still. After weeks of watching, I’m left with more questions than answers.

Sometimes our best-laid plans take a detour. Sometimes our hopes, dreams and efforts don’t bear fruit, and so we try again. Sometimes we need to just be patient and wait.

Then it occurs to me. Perhaps the real lesson for me tonight is that as much as we try to understand what “it” all means—whatever “it” is for us today--answers come not through thinking them into existence, but rather when we allow them to be revealed in their own time.

And so for tonight at least, I will not know the answer to the mystery of the nest. Instead, I will strive to keep my eyes and heart open, trusting that whatever comes next--both in my life and that of the geese--and whenever it's revealed, it’s all okay.