They were ducks, not geese, they were not “in chevron flight”, and they were almost certainly not beginning a seasonal migration.
Nonetheless, a certain longtime-favourite Joni Mitchell song leapt into my head.
(Photo is copyright Doug Spencer. Taken at 7.06 pm on 16 March 2019, from Peak Viewpoint, a few kilometres away from Lake Matheson – drive toward the coast, along Cook Flat Road)
Urge For Going was one of Joni Mitchell’s earliest songs.
Many people first heard a Joni Mitchell song via Tom Rush’s version of this one.
(Rush also very capably covered a Jackson Browne song, before Browne had recorded)
I like Joni’s own and Tom’s treatments, but my favourite version features Tony Rice as singer and guitar hero, on his 1988 album, Native American.
If Tony Rice is new to you, he is quite probably the greatest guitarist you had never heard of, until now.
Rice is the most elegant guitarist ever to have emerged from bluegrass music – a genre he never abandoned, nor confined himself within.
I (and not a few others) think that Tony Rice is the greatest flatpicking guitarist, ever, and one of the greater guitarists, period.
He was also a very fine singer, until dysphonia struck him in the first half of the 1990s.
For quite some years his ability to play was unimpaired, but this very handsome individual became distressingly gaunt.
Eventually, playing became too physically painful….
His Wikipedia entry is here.
I urge you to click this, to read Tony Rice, Guitar Hero, a very poignant New York Times profile, from February 2014 – if the NYT make you pay to read it, it is worth the asking price.
At the time of the 2011 performance below, Rice was still a jaw-dropping soloist…and much more subtle than most “guitar heroes”.
Tony’s brother Wyatt Rice is the other guitarist, Rob Ickes plays dobro, Josh Williams is mandolinist, Ricky Simpkins fiddler and Bryn Davies double bassist.