By Mary Kay Roth
Each year I come back.
I come back for the beauty and clarity of a ritual that is millions of years old.
I come back for the gorgeous lifts at dawn and dusk when something almost mystical happens – when the rhythms of our lives throb with the pulse of spring.
I come back for that earthy evocative primal cry that reaches deep down and tugs at my soul.
It’s early Saturday morning and we are bundled under blankets, sitting beside the riverbank, the gilded dawn making sparkling ripples on the Platte.
Our eyes are closed as we listen for the first waves of that telltale cry, a rich, bawdy chorus of rolling, twilling birdsong weaving an intimate spell over the land.
We have come here for the migration of the sandhill cranes, one of the most remarkable wildlife spectacles on earth and the largest gathering of cranes in the world. Throughout the next six weeks, a million or so of these geeky yet elegant birds will travel through the central Platte River Valley.
Each year I come see them.
This year I really need them. I need to imagine a time beyond the boundaries and confines of politics and weariness. Somehow, somewhere, despite these troubled times, I need the promise of something certain and true.
As Wendell Berry so perfectly understood, “When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be … I come into the peace of wild things.”
I come into the peace of the sandhill cranes.
For decades these beloved creatures have served as my personal compass, my solace, my clarity. Like watching the inevitable tide of the ocean or the stars overhead, light years away, cranes seem eternal and everlasting. Existing alongside prehistoric megafauna like saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths, they have remained largely unchanged for millions of years.
On this particular brisk morning, just at daybreak, thousands and thousands of cranes rise from the river before us in stunning liftoff – amidst a familiar, noisy flurry of feather and sound.
As they circle and. dive above, we raise our eyes to their flight path, these glorious creatures soaring on the breezes in constant chatter. Eventually, swooping down into the nearby winter rubble of cornfields, they dine.
And they dance, oh they dance, gently and gracefully hopping and prancing with joy among the stalks and stubble of their mid-migration feast.
In his 1937 essay "Marshland Elegy" Aldo Leopold wrote of the sandhill crane: “When we hear his call we hear no mere bird. We hear the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution. He is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men.”
Each spring, for almost 50 years now, I’ve been coming to see the cranes here at the Alda bridge just west of Grand Island. Once upon a time there was only a battered picnic table sitting beside the river shore. These days you’ll find an official viewing stand, parking lots and informational plaques.
But through those decades, whether I came alone, or alongside friends, my kids, grandkids – every single year, they still surprised me.
Sandhill cranes are among the oldest living birds on the planet, a ticking of the geological clock, their ancient lineage telling a storied history with fossil records placing them in Nebraska more than nine million years ago.
The cranes we meet this Saturday morning have likely come from a winter vacation in Texas, New Mexico or Mexico – and will soon head north toward Alaska, Canada, even Siberia. Some fly shorter distances, some migrate as many as 10,000 miles.
They linger along the Platte as a stopover, feeding in cornfields and wet meadows by day and, by night, roosting in the safe and shallow reaches of the Platte.
After fattening up with an extra pound of weight during their stay here, they’ll be on their way – flying up to 400 miles a day, 500 with a good tailwind.
In my travels I’ve witnessed the Taj Mahal and the Parthenon, migrations of polar bears and wildebeests. Above all these sights, I’ll take the Platte River migration, most assuredly one of the wonders of the natural world.
Despite the darkest of dark days, yes indeed, light and life do come around again. The cranes come back.
And they offer us wise counsel, navigating their journey with resilience as they rest in the grace of the world, always finding a soft place to land.
In this most sacred season of dreamers and imaginers, right on the cusp of spring when there are those of us who still believe in silly wonder and those of us who still believe in hope – we have been given a precious gift.
So, I’m sending out a call to action today: Sometime in the coming weeks, please take a few hours and go see the sandhill cranes.
Watch them lift with a whoosh at sunup – or languidly slip into the river at sundown. Roam the country roads to see their flocks feed in the fields. Pause to watch them dance.
On my visit to the Platte River this past Saturday morning, ultimately the cold started nipping at my fingers and toes, and I had to fold up my chair, taking one last inhale of earthen breath – and heading for the warmth of the car.
But not without one last glance over my shoulder, one last quiet smile.
Until next year.
~ Gratitude to my friend, Tom White, for letting me share his magnificent photographs of sandhill cranes.
