Amidst a large forest, in a large oak tree’s trunk, a small wood duck egg lived. There, a duckling sat in her soft eggshell for a mere thirty days. She emerged from her shell, a small shivering creature. The young duckling noticed her brothers and sisters who began to emerge from their own shells. After every duckling emerged, they began to dry each other off. The baby ducklings waited together until their mother arrived in their small home. After waiting for hours, a large duck flew through the entrance to the nest. Her mother had arrived. When she spoke, the duckling recognized her voice, for she sung to them before they ever hatched. The old wood duck looked at her young ducklings with the love every child wishes to see in their mother’s eyes.
Soon it became nightfall for the young duck, and she felt surprisingly warm in the small nest. Before long, each and every duck closed their delicate eyelids and drifted off into a dreamless sleep.
The heat’s absence in the nest awoke the ducklings. As the duckling’s mother pushed off from the trunk’s opening, the young duck opened her eyes and wondered where her mother went. Off in the distance, she heard her mother’s voice. Curiosity dragged the young duckling to the tree’s opening. She looked down from high above in the large oak’s trunk where the nest sat. Oh, how far it seemed to the small duck. But she heard her mother call her, and felt in her fragile heart she must jump. And she jumped.
Falling. She fell without the grace in which she imagined the fall. Her feet, much too large for her small body, flailed out in every direction as she fell weightlessly towards the forest floor. She hit the ground with a thud, but the impact bounced her back into the air and onto her feet again. After readjusting herself, she followed her mother’s calls to a large pond. She turned to notice her siblings followed her all the way from the nest. All together, the day old wood ducklings stepped into the pond and instinctively began to paddle towards their mother. The ducklings, oblivious to the predators who filled the water they entered, met their mother in the large pond’s center.
From day forward, the young ducklings ate and spent their time in the large pond. Their mother not guiding them, but never far, watching their backs at all times. At daybreak, the wood duck’s mother led them from the pond to a secluded spot in the tall grasses nearby. There they slept. For the first night, the young duck slept unsoundly. The forest seemed to tower above her, blocking any light source reaching the tall grasses where she slumbered, the darkness both terrified and comforted her. She wondered how the trees seemed so tall, and how she ever slept atop the tall oak who stood tall and strong above her.
Weeks passed, and as the duckling’s wings matured, flight began to seem imaginable to the wood ducklings. After struggling a sufficient amount, the now maturing wood duck learned to fly. She soared through the sky with her magnificent wings and looked down from above at the large oak tree, and the large pond, and the large forest. As she soared, she thought to herself, maybe the forest never menace her after all. Maybe she only needed a little perspective.