You come across the lake just beyond the avenue of oaks in the park near my home. My family calls this place the ‘party park’, although its official name is Subiaco Common.
The party park is replete with memories of summer evenings when we lingered over shared picnic meals. We chatted as we watched the children climb and swing in the playground. Sometimes we watched, hearts in our mouths, as the little ones challenged their balance on the rocks in the stream that runs through grassy patches.
The artificial but lovely lake, with its fountains and floating mounds planted with grasses, invites visiting water birds to nest or merely to rest a while. Most of the time, you can count the birds on your fingers.
Birds on the lake
But at dusk one evening not long ago, a large flock of mallard ducks and companionable peahens gathered. So, also, did twenty or more elegant black swans. Black swans, I’m told, are quite rare worldwide. But in Perth, white swans are rarely seen, and the Black Swan is the emblem of Western Australia.
The abundance of bird-life fluttering and flapping, swimming and dipping might have disturbed the peaceful scene. But I felt awe as I watched. I wondered if geese might also join them soon.
Farm life
The birds reminded me of the farm where I often holidayed, years ago. The pond near the olive trees, close to the cottage, was home to a flock of noisy, cackling geese as well as other waterbirds. The geese kept watch to protect the sheep, llamas and alpacas from harm, real or imagined, from predatory foxes.
In another memory, a flock of geese roamed over the grass and paths of a Fifteenth Century cloister, somewhere in Toulouse, France. Someone told me they were descendants from the original flock, used to guard the cloister from enemies.
When I Googled the particular cloister, no mention of the geese appeared. Instead the website discussed Toulouse geese as a source of food. I remembered then that thirteen geese constantly parade in the grounds of the Barcelona Cathedral. Finding my photos of the Barcelona geese delighted me, again.
But I can’t help wondering how precious memories can be scrambled, or worse, debunked.
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Acknowledgements
This is another piece written in response to a prompt in an intensive twelve week online writing course with the title, ‘For the Joy and the Sorrow’. You can read other blogs prompted by this course here and here.
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I love the contrasting stories of your local lake and birds in Subiaco with the Toulouse geese in Barcelona. And your photos are beautiful, especially of the running stream. I like the angle! Were you standing in the water? I think not, but it appears as though you could have been!
The twist at the end is so true of life! A neatly stated query about the validity of memory. I wonder what happened to the geese!
The writing prompts we are both enjoying with For the Joy and the Sorrow are stretching the way we capture our memories, too, and what we assign to them.
🙂
Thank you for your comment, Eileen Susan, and our shared endeavour. I don’t think I’d have completed the Joy and Sorrow exercises if you weren’t there to encourage me. As it is, I’m grateful for the shared experience and encourgement. I especially like your praise of my photo of the creek. I enjoyed that one. Pity it was too dark to get a photo of the birds on the lake by the time I got there.
The realisation that birds fly in an out of our past experiences and link our memories like a mobius strip that goes on forever, is the delightful image I took away after reading this Blog.
Thanks, Maureen, for inspiring me and helping me to form this mind image. Every time that these mallards, swans, willie wagtails and/or magpies, fly over me here in our neighbouring suburb, they are likely to have also flown over you, or to have visited you in party park. We are intrinsically connected by the elements that surround us and the wings on the wind.