Winter Woods: The Wild Geese

Somewhere to the northwest I can hear shooting, shotguns discharge like an artillery barrage. I am predisposed to trespass like some people are predisposed to checking their mobile phones, frequently and without thought, but I have no fancy for walking into the middle of a rough shoot. The guns sound a long way off, perhaps on the other side of the river. The sky is already darkening, a blizzard sweeps in from the north, but before it arrives the sky is thick with skein after skein of geese. Some fly over in small v’s or five or ten birds then a massive armada of geese crosses the fields, a hundred birds in a ragged formation, noisy and chaotic. I don’t know if they are fleeing the blizzard or the shoot.