After my conversations with Corin Hale this morning, I decided that I would spend the afternoon doing a bit of digging in the Library. I wanted to see if there are any other mentions of unusual behaviour in the wildlife in this area to go with what I have observed. I also wanted to see if I could find any more mentions of Goose Paths, they seem fascinating!

The library at Eldran is a lovely sanctuary of calm within the noise of the city. I am not really used to cities and this quiet comforting building was just what I needed this afternoon.

The shelves are stacked full of books made from both organic resonance paper and the low resonance ink only type, and there are skein access points with full resonance integration. It is the perfect place to look for the sorts of patterns and observations that have been made over tens, if not hundreds of years. Today it was pleasantly busy with a quiet hum of people having whispered discussions about research, making notes or just reading books.

I started in the local folklaw section, while I was in the Rumbler out of Lethran I chatted to the driver and he told me that there are Roadwarden tales about the gold-back migrations and general habits, apparently if they are seen passing through, the area is said to be in good balance as they are quite sensitive to the Resonance flows.

I found the notebooks of local naturalist collective who have been making observations in the area between Eldran and Brae Wood for something like 46 years. There are lots of lovely observations of hoop-weasel antics and some fascinating insect activity which I had no idea about, but the main thing that interested me was the observations about the migration of the geese and the gold-backs

All over the region, people look forward to the arrival of both of these creatures, but particularly the gold-backs, according to the recordings in these notebooks, they have long been associated with balance in the world and a generally healthy ecosystem. I know in Bern the children (and many adults) love to sit and watch the geese with all their honking and flapping! I can only imagine how wonderful it would be to watch the gold-backs but they tend to stay this side of Brae woods.

Reading through all of this, I have discovered that the migrations of both creatures have been getting less and less regular over the last few years. The dates seem to have been relatively stable until the last 7 or so years when they started varying wildly, being as much as three weeks late or early. I wonder if this could possibly be related to the instability the Ministry of Alignment thinks they are correcting.

From these note books, and the Aethri resonance maps it looks like there is some correlation between the migration paths and the highest concentrations of natural resonance groves. I am not sure how these could be connected yet but they could be!

I also found another reference to Goose Paths, there are some sketch maps of migration routes and there is an interesting pattern emerging. For large parts of the route, the geese and the gold-backs follow the same paths, not always the most direct, but winding and turning in near synchronisation. These maps were hand annotated, and the phrase that stuck with me immediately was: “The gold-backs tread the goose paths into the land”