As the birds fly south

It’s time to start cooking winter foods: chili, soups, casseroles. Hearty meals that warm you from the inside. As the birds fly south, it’s time to invest in hot cocoa and Baileys.

I wonder what it’s like up there for those birds on the long, autumn journeys south. Do they talk? How do they know where they’re going, and do they revisit the same place every year?

Think of it way up there. Ahead: sky, clouds, the curvature of the earth. Cragged mountains on the horizon — snow-capped in the western United States, domes of skeleton trees in the east. If the birds fly before the leaves drop, then in the east they would see domes of harvest colors: orange, gold, scarlet, brown.

Below, the birds would see patchworks of farm land: green, yellow, and brown quilts. They’d see the squiggles of rivers, the the density of trees in a park surrounded by roads and development; they’d see the world at a scale we rarely see as humans, unless we travel in airplanes a lot.

What a way to be. To travel great distances every year, seeking a climate that suits the season, covering vast expanses of of earth and sky, watching it all, unencumbered by the shield of a car and a seatbelt, or the encasement of an airplane, or even the chin strap of a helmet.

Thank you to Grumpy Axolotl for the prompt “As the birds fly south.”

For the month of November, I will be participating in NaBloPoMo and plan to publish every day of the month. Usually, I will publish a 10-minute free write, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Follow along with the tag #NovemberDaily.