Where Do the Ducks Go?

Holden Caulfield wonders to the taxi driver about the ducks in Central Park. “You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over?” I was thinking about Holden’s query today during my daily walk through the park at the Highland Bridge development. Over the Spring and summer months I had followed the ducks in the various water spots—some planned and some randomly formed as a result of the too infrequent rains—in which they had settled. I watched them hatch their eggs and raise their families, observed them swimming about and ducking under the waters searching (and eating) whatever it is that ducks consume as meals. Elizabeth tells me that there were in residence two varieties of ducks: one that searched for food by sinking just their heads into the water and then another variety that upended their whole bodies perpendicular into the water looking for their sustenance. I enjoyed the spectacle, even enjoyed the obliviousness of the ducks to my presence. They were busy and had no interest in the voyeur. But as the Fall proceeded I began to note that the ducks were slowly disappearing. I feared that they had been eaten by the predators, but Elizabeth (my authority on the wildlifes about here) said that probably the ducks had flown the coop, as it were, heading somewhere where the water would remain unfrozen, the food plentiful and the weather warm. I wondered if they might raise more families when they had resettled, but Elizabeth didn’t seem to have a thought regarding that eventuality. I was a bit unsettled in this gap in her expertise. 
            However today, on a gloriously sunny and relatively mild November morning, as I headed up Montreal Avenue I noted just to my south a group of a dozen or so ducks calmly swimming in the water and ducking for whatever nutrition they could discover beneath the surface. They were of the first variety and only sunk their heads into the water. I immediately called Elizabeth to wonder to her why they were still here. She theorized that perhaps they had stopped here on their journey to warmer climes: the water was free of any ice and the food plentiful yet and readily available. I suppose Elizabeth meant that the ducks had stopped here even as we on our road trips headed somewhere settled into motels. I guess we all need to rest from our journeys and to anticipate in our moments of rest starting off on them again. Perhaps our journeys even get defined by these pauses in them.