Infinite Sky

When I was a child, we’d play a game on long journeys. As the dull grey ribbons of road unrolled, we’d look for something interesting out of the windows. It started with “I Spy”, but as we grew up it became “I’m Impressed”.

One of us had to point out something and we all had to say what impressed us most about it. The one with the most inventive, funny or outrageous tale chose the next subject. As you can imagine, this favoured my older brother, but we all had voting rights and my parents were generous, so we’d all get a turn soon enough.

Even hitch hikers were included in the game, and the time we picked up Grey Donald lives in the family memory. We should have had another three hours of straight motorway driving to go when we picked Donald up, but some ghastly pile-up saw us stuck in a tailback.

Dad started: “See that pylon. I’m impressed.”

James followed: “Yes, it’s made of an impressive number of triangles, each framing a separate picture of the countryside.”

Mum added “That you can make something so tall, and so strong and so vital, just from steel struts and bolts impresses me.”

I continued: “There are thousands of volts of electricity up there. I am really impressed that it doesn’t leak out and fry us all!”

Donald finished with “I am impressed that it’s grey, the same grey as a cloud.”

James won that round, and three more followed, each ending with Donald being impressed with something’s greyness that simply didn’t impress the rest of us. We remained traffic-bound, and with some irritation Dad said. “OK, Donald. What out there really impresses you?”

The car cooled. This now went beyond the game into the dangerous territory of probing a stranger’s inner thoughts.

“You see that goose”, said Donald, unflustered by Dad’s tone “the grey one with the black-and-white head, sitting on the grass by the river?” We all looked and could just make it out in the distance.

“I thought it would be something grey.” said James, looking to Dad for approval.

“That’s a bar-headed goose” continued Donald. “It’s not native so it will have escaped from somewhere. That grey goose impresses me. It’s the dividing line between finite land and infinite sky. It nests north of the Himalayas and flies south for the winter in India, crossing higher than Everest in the process. Other birds take the same route, but they sneak through lower mountain passes. Only this fantastic bird flies higher than Everest. It has big wings to catch the sparse and chilly atmosphere and special blood-rich muscles that scour the limited oxygen. Every bird has its adaptations, so why does this impress me? Because of the reason it takes this route. It always has.”

“And just because it’s always done something, that impresses you why, exactly? Said James, who was wavering between the cues of his father’s pique and his own interest in Donald’s story.

“Because the mountains weren’t always there.” Said Donald. “This grey bird, this dot, this misty punctuation between land and heaven, has been flying to and fro while the Indian subcontinent squeezed and rumpled the Himalayas out of the Asian plateau. Every year, these mountains get a little higher as continents collide, and the air gets a little thinner. Every year, our goose, its offspring and all the countless generations before it respond. So this isn’t just a goose. It’s a grey full stop, a fixed point in time and space that marks two boundless realms.”

At that point, the goose stood up, took a running jump and flew away. We stared in awe as the bird wheeled round, crapped and headed down the river, honking all the way. It looked normal. It looked grey. But above all it looked impressive.

Months later, Grey Donald’s story remained with us. And we had a new game for traffic jams: “I’m impressed with that grey thing.”