When a small and helpless gosling struggles its way into this world, and takes its first breaths of air, does it arrive with a sense of knowing that it will someday embark on a great and perilous journey across thousands of miles and vast expanses of terrain? My best judgment tells me this isn’t so.
At what point in life then, does this little being become conscious of this greater purpose? An internal clock, ticking away, counting down the hours, minutes, and seconds until departure, is what I like to imagine.
Perhaps one day those who have previously completed the migration just head off, and the rest follow in an earnest effort to remain with the group.
What’s fascinating is that we just don’t know.
Today, with all the fantastic technology we have, we still cannot explain why birds, butterflies, whales and all manner of beasts, at certain periods in their lives are compelled to undertake arduous, often life threatening voyages to destinations that are incomprehensibly far away.
Today, with all the fantastic technology we have, we still cannot explain why birds, butterflies, whales and all manner of beasts, at certain periods in their lives are compelled to undertake arduous, often life threatening voyages to destinations that are incomprehensibly far away.
Whatever the explanation may be, when the call to migrate comes, it never falls upon deaf ears.
Some people will describe it as a building anticipation, an inner restlessness that cannot be ignored, then before you know it, you’ve sold nearly everything you own and you’re standing, slightly stupefied, in front of your over-packed vehicle with the realization that you’re leaving.
It all happens faster than you can logically process, and I suppose that is the beauty of migration – if a bird was able to truly comprehend the risks involved in the migratory process, I mean really sit and dwell on it, you may find that some would choose to stay, and take their chances with winter or food shortages or whatever hardship the migration is intended to avoid.
Nature is beautiful in this way; it pulls and pushes us all in one direction or another. Without our conscious awareness, we find one day we are not the same, we have grown, changed, have different goals, passions and ambitions.
For some of us, that realization is we must go. We must migrate.
