Close to Home, Far Away

It was a warm day for Wisconsin in March. Thus, I proposed to make the meeting with colleagues at the Oneida Nation Community Health Center an outdoor one, a walk-n-talk type of meeting.

As we strolled along, I heard something faint and familiar. I couldn’t quite make it out and had just about forgotten it when I heard it again, slightly louder this time.

A unique, guttural, bugle call that can be heard 2.5 miles from its source.

The sandhill cranes were here!

I am a big fan of these birds, waiting each October for the first sound of their calls. Squinting as I look up to find the source of the noise, as sandhill cranes fly quite high in the sky. I imagine their thousands of miles journey to make it here, often arriving in a state of severe malnutrition. Then, over the next months, choosing my runs and hikes to maximize chances of seeing sedges (a group of cranes) of these majestic beings as they congregate along the Rio Grande. Finally, the sad good-bye as we hit February and the cranes make their way north again.

So, it was in this context that hearing the cranes as we walked, some 1400 miles from Albuquerque, brought a joy to my heart.

I am sure that to an ornithologist, there is nothing profound about what I experienced.

To me, it was life teaching that the cycles and patterns of our world are so much bigger than us. As New Mexicans say our sad goodbye to the cranes each February, the northern states get to welcome them back. And the birds don’t care about any of it. They are just following their innate intelligence about where they belong at a given moment.

It was life reminding me (us) 

        that we are always closer to the 

                places and spaces 

                        we know as "home" 

                                   than we think.

The 2 above pictures were taken by Mark Krasberg, a photographer friend of mine.

A minute of cranes for your visual and auditory enhancement